


Diplomatic Incidents

by Ariaste



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Fluff, Getting Together, Linguistics, M/M, Post-Canon, Translation Spells, Versus, a touch of angst for spice, and anything you do need to know will be explained in the author's notes, being in love but not admitting you want to sleep together, blow a kiss to the sky for wangxian+fan, canon-typical borderline alcoholism, during-canon for DAI, once again you don't need to know anything about DAI to read this, post-canon for MDZS anyway, sleeping together but not admitting you're in love, you probably do need to know a good bit about MDZS tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:27:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26937364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariaste/pseuds/Ariaste
Summary: Dorian Pavus, Wei Wuxian, and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known.
Relationships: Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus, Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Comments: 305
Kudos: 1098





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Bright, like the fish that kill you if you eat them--can't hate you for hiding if you burn so brilliantly.  
>  Glittering to gloss a hidden hurt, unlearning not to hope for more..._  
> \--Cole about Dorian, Dragon Age: Inquisition
> 
> "This is a weird idea for a crossover," I hear you muttering. Yes, I know, but it's about to make an eerie amount of sense. Hear me out, this is the thesis statement: *holds up two drunk gay necromancers* these are the same, let me prove it to you.
> 
> (Hint: There's a second, secret thesis statement.)
> 
> This is mostly CQL-verse, which is to say that the Phoenix Mountain kiss didn't happen.

"Question," said Dorian when Leliana paused. "You keep talking about this Chief Cultivator. What _is_ a Chief Cultivator?”

“It’s something like an Inquisitor,” Leliana said. “Not directly in charge of lands, not the head of one of their ruling families, but--”

“But still in possession of enough political power to give those families a really bad day if they step out of line, I’m guessing,” said Lavellan. “Isn’t it an elected position, though?”

“Like the Archon in Tevinter?” Dorian asked.

“In that the position requires a powerful mage, yes. In practice, perhaps closer to the Arch Divine,” said Leliana. “The heads of the families appoint someone, rather than holding an outright election. I gather that declining the appointment is... not done.”

“They’ll never get troops here in time,” Cullen said quietly, staring grimly down at the map. “Even if they were to leap into an alliance the moment we show up on their doorstep, it’ll take too long to move enough people to make a difference.”

“All my reports say they have methods of extraordinarily fast travel,” Leliana said. “But we shall see. We must also think beyond the present crisis. There will be a life after Corypheus, and we would do well to have allies in the northwest.”

***

It was the longest trip that the Inquisitor had ever taken them on, even with Dorian’s help. About once per day, he could teleport them and all their gear roughly a hundred and twenty miles, whereupon he would collapse into a heap, be slung like a sack of potatoes onto one of the mounts, nap for a couple hours against the shoulder of whoever was riding with him, and spend the rest of the day frantically scribbling out the preparations for the next morning’s spell. At night, his companions nagged him to eat, poured broth down his sorry throat, and tipped him into his bedroll. The next morning, he’d stumble out of his tent at dawn, spend hours preparing the spell--it was a ferociously complicated one--and then they’d do it all over again.

Halfway into the journey (which Dorian estimated would take more than a month unless he suddenly got extraordinarily good at the teleportation spell) he began to notice that he was waking up against the Iron Bull’s shoulder more often than anyone else’s. “Ugh,” he said, so as to make sure that no one could accuse him of being happy about this. Or begin to suspect what occasionally happened of an evening when Dorian was a little tipsy and wandered into Bull’s room at Skyhold. At least it was still fewer times than he could count on one hand. Barely. “No wonder I keep dreaming that I’m rubbing my face in mud. You’re filthy.” 

“Sure that’s what you’re dreaming of, big guy?” Bull said easily. “Thought you’d be dreaming of snuggling men with big muscles.” And then the brute made those muscles ripple and flex under Dorian’s cheek, which was just patently unfair. Cheater.

“Take a bath,” Dorian snapped. Exhaustion made him peevish. Travel made him peevish. Being forced--forced!--to have lustful thoughts about a Qunari brute and his splendid shoulders made him triply peevish.

***

The exhaustion got worse when they reached the Volca Sea and started making their way more westerly. The language changed quite suddenly, it seemed to Dorian, but he had been spending more and more of the day unconscious, so perhaps he was not the best judge. One day he’d heard someone speaking a barely-understandable variety of Common, the next a completely unintelligible offshoot-dialect of Common, and the next, nothing he’d ever heard before. He began, then, to have to run translation spells as well, which at least took far, far less energy than the teleportation ones. Even so, they too were viciously complex and took a great deal of careful, sustained concentration, especially if he wanted to make them work for anyone besides just himself. 

After several days, in order to conserve his energy, he gave up on the translation spell and just _learned_ the two most important questions they had: _Is this Gusu? Could you point us in the right direction, please?_

He noticed that the people here were _very_ alarmed by Bull--and who could blame them, really? Dorian was alarmed about Bull every waking moment of the day. He was particularly alarmed about the possibility that Bull’s dreadful belt might abruptly fail at holding up his awful pants when they made camp that night, and he was even more alarmed about the noble sacrifice that he, Dorian, would have to undertake in this event. _Oh no_ , he pictured himself saying. _Oh no, I guess now I_ **_have_ ** _to get right on my knees and_ \--

Anyway.

The people who were alarmed by Bull for reasons having to do with the giant axe strapped on his back and the terrifying horns sprouting from his thick skull (rather than about the dreadful forbidden knowledge that Dorian had been carrying with him for the past few months, to wit: Bull being an objectionably good kisser) were usually at least partially derailed from their fear and alarm at the _giant terrifying monster_ by the confusion at seeing the monster riding a giant Wild Elk with little bows on its massive antlers, pink to match its pinkish-purplish hide. They were then generally further confused by the very pretty local manners that Bull had adopted from Maker-knew-where, probably when Dorian was asleep and drooling on his shoulder.

Dorian suspected, too, that Bull was picking up the local language almost as quickly as people were speaking to him in it, but he could not confirm this--Bull was a tricky bastard like that, always staying quiet about whatever he heard and saw and deduced, always letting people think what they wanted about him, sometimes reinforcing those thoughts a little here and there. Yes, the big brutish barbarian, not a thought in his head but sex and killing and where his next bucket of beer was coming from. 

This, too, made Dorian peevish, because he’d always thought that the idea of performing a version of yourself like that had been _his_ invention.

***

Their luck turned right around the time that people stopped saying, “Gusu? Uhhh, I think it’s kind of that direction, maybe?” and started saying, “Oh, Gusu! It’s about two weeks away, keep to this road until you make it to the village with the big red temple, and then go north.”

They stopped around twilight and set up camp for the night in a sheltered bit of forest just off the main road, and Dorian was wearily copying out the calculations for the next morning’s teleportation spell and trying not to cry at the very thought when some resurrected corpses attacked out of the underbrush, snarling and slavering, their withered hands claw-like and vicious. 

Dorian yelped and spent half his mana reserves, already scanty and struggling, to fade-step out of the thick of the fray, then expended most of the rest to throw barriers up around himself and Cole--Lavellan and Bull were out of his range. He felt his skin break out in clammy sweat and he gritted his teeth against the darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision, forcing himself to swing his staff again and again. He heard shouts, saw a handful of white-robed figures emerge out of the underbrush, their swords flashing in the firelight.

He didn’t see much more than that. He pushed one more barrage of lightning through his dwindling reserves and collapsed into unconsciousness. It was becoming a regrettably familiar sensation.

***

“--ian. Dorian. Wake up.” Lavellan’s voice. What felt like Lavellan’s hands on his face, gently patting his cheeks.

“Just leave me here to die,” Dorian moaned.

“Oh, thank the Maker. Why didn’t you tell anyone your reserves were so low?” Lavellan chided. “I have lyrium, Dorian. Four bottles, still.” 

“I want my mummy,” Dorian said, which was _definitively_ untrue. What he actually wanted was that kind, elderly elven nurse whose care he’d been given into when he was five.

“Best you’ve got is me, big guy,” came Bull’s voice. Dorian, without opening his eyes, scrunched his nose. “C’mere, I got big enough tits, we can make this work.” Dorian found himself hauled up and then leaned back against Bull’s… chest. He cracked his eyes open.

Everything was blurry, and there were still all those white figures standing around them. 

Dorian squinted at them, his head pounding like the worst hangover he’d ever had.

“Here, drink,” Lavellan said, and Dorian mulishly accepted the lyrium potion. It didn’t help with the headache much, but at least it made his vision stop swimming and the black spots stop blooming like fireworks before his eyes.

“I still want to die,” Dorian informed Lavellan, who patted his shoulder.

“That’s just Dorian for ‘I’m not in danger, I’ll be okay now,’” Lavellan said cheerfully. “So I’m glad to hear it. Now, uh… Don’t suppose you have enough juice for a translation spell?”

Dorian thought about crying again. He must have tensed up, because Bull stroked his arm. It felt nice. Dorian swallowed. “But of course, Inquisitor,” he said, with what he felt was a reasonable approximation of his usual airy tone. 

His vision had cleared, and he could see now they were surrounded by--well, children. Technically teenagers, he supposed, but they were _dreadfully_ young-looking, and for some reason they were all dressed identically in flowing white robes, with neat little white ribbons across their foreheads, matching little white boots, nearly-matching hairstyles, and swords.

Without casting the translation spell, he said in the local language, “Is this Gusu?”

The little white-clad children all nodded in unison, their wary expressions easing.

One of them--the oldest one, it seemed, probably the leader of the… gang, or whatever this was--said something that sounded very polite with an inquisitive tilt of his head. 

Dorian mustered all his strength, reached out with the fingers of his magic, and wove the Fade into understanding. It made his head scream with pain, and he felt Bull tense behind him. “We are the Inquisition,” Dorian said, “and we are looking for someone called the Chief Cultivator--”

“Hurts,” Cole murmured. “Hurts. Hurts. Hurts.’

“Dorian...” said Lavellan, suddenly worried. “Dorian, you’re very pale--never mind, I was stupid to ask--”

“--and I know we look like a pack of scoundrels,” Dorian continued brightly. “But we really mean no harm and we’d like to beg for his help with a demon that wants to take over the world. Do you know him, by chance?” 

The translation spell was already fraying in his hands, so when the oldest teenager spoke again, frowning, Dorian only got impressions: Confusion, concern, curiosity. _Father._

“Oh, he’s your father,” Dorian said brightly. “There you are, then, Inquisitor, will that do?”

And then he passed out again. 

***

When he woke up, it was day, and he felt so much better that he suspected he would find that he had lost track of _which_ day it was. There was a roof over him, that was the first thing he noticed. There was a bed beneath him. There were four walls, a window, a door. The room was drably-decorated enough that he suspected it was an inn of some sort--all inns looked fundamentally the same. 

Cole appeared in a blink beside him. “Dorian!”

“It’s too early in the morning for this, Cole,” Dorian said, shoving his head under the pillows. He paused. “ _Is_ it morning?”

“The sun is getting tired, it’s thinking about going back to bed, but bed is so far away,” Cole said, worriedly. 

“So, what, two o’clock in the afternoon?”

“Lavellan says Bull is going to start a diplomatic incident. Dorian, what’s a diplomatic incident?”

Of course he was. Dorian groaned and sat up. “Where are my clothes?”

Cole peered at him from under the brim of his hat. “Could they be at the diplomatic incident?” 

“Probably not,” Dorian said blearily. “Where are we?”

Cole put his head on one side and seemed to be thinking about it hard. “A room,” he said at last.

“You’re doing a great job, Cole,” Dorian said, as kindly as he could manage, and pushed himself out of bed.

***

Every other time he had attended a diplomatic incident, it had involved shouting, at the very least, and sometimes thrown furniture. What Dorian walked into was a room in which the atmosphere was _so_ icy that it rivaled even the most petty and passive-aggressive of his mother’s tea parties. 

In fact, it did seem to _be_ a tea party, upon closer inspection. Incredible. Teapots, tiny tea cups, tea.

The common room of the inn had three low tables, each surrounded by cushions. At one table were Lavellan and Bull, looking panicked and sheepish, respectively. At the other two tables sat a collection of those white-robed teenagers, a white-robed grown man, and another man in black and red, standing out like a crow amongst doves. The two men were both _dreadfully_ pretty, and Dorian saw with one glance the suspected source of the incipient diplomatic incident. 

_Let’s make a bet_ , _Dorian_ , he thought to himself. _One barrel of the cheapest Fereldan ale we can find says that Bull flirted with someone inadvisable. Two barrels says that man in black is the Chief Cultivator--he stands out too much to be anything else, and black dye is_ **_expensive_** _. The rest of them, all in uniform, must be his honor guard._

He looked at them again. The man in black and red looked privately amused, thank the Maker, so any diplomatic incident was probably not unsalvageable. The one in white was expressionless, but it was the sort of expressionless that Dorian’s own mother had worn when she was incandescent with fury and trying to hide it. The captain of the honor guard, Dorian concluded. Probably offended that Bull had disrespected his liege. Bull never could see a pretty face without trying to flirt with it.

Dorian made an elegant bow to them in the Orlesian style, smiled in a sweet and apologetic way, and wove the Fade. The probably-Chief-Cultivator sat up very straight, watching his hands with sharp, bright eyes as he worked. It was… effortless, in comparison to the last month’s labors, and more comfortingly it felt _good,_ like stretching out a sore muscle. 

“Gentlemen,” he said, when the spell was done. “My _deepest_ apologies. My companions are not natural diplomats, but they mean no harm. The big one in particular is a lumbering idiot.” Bull would not, Dorian thought, mind this assessment. He was a spy, after all, and it was even more convincing when someone else told your story than when you had to tell it yourself.

“Oh, beautiful work! Did you develop that talisman array yourself?” said the presumably-Chief-Cultivator, springing to his feet with an expression of delight and approaching Dorian.

“Ah--it’s a fairly complex spell--”

“Spell?” the Chief Cultivator said curiously. “Like sorcery? Dark tricks? With resentful energy? But what are you channeling it through?” He picked up Dorian’s hands and turned them over, peering at his palms.

“Wei Ying,” said the one in white, flat-voiced, and the Chief Cultivator dropped Dorian’s hands and sighed. 

“Time for that later, I suppose. Sizhui gave us as much information as he’d gotten from you, but we’ve had a bit of trouble making sense of your friends. This one is Wei Ying, courtesy name Wuxian,” he said, cupping his hands before him and bowing in a way that looked lazy even to Dorian’s untrained eye. “Sizhui said something about a Great Questioning? Are you monks?”

Dorian blinked, unraveled that in his mind. Oh--that translation spell must have been failing even sooner than he’d thought. “Not Great Questioning. The _Inquisition_. This is Mahanon Lavellan, the Inquisitor,” he said, gesturing. Lavellan nodded a little bow, grimacing with apology.

“What is he inquiring about?”

Dorian muttered under his breath and mentally adjusted the focus of the translation spell. “The _Inquisitor_ ,” he said again, more carefully. “I’m told it’s something rather like a Chief Cultivator.”

“Oh, I see. What were you looking for our Chief Cultivator for, then, if you’ve already got one of your own?”

 _Our_ Chief Cultivator, he said. Perhaps… Dorian’s eyes flickered to the other man, the one in white, the one that was beautiful like an untouchable, immaculate statue of white river-ice. Come to think of it, keeping white fabric that pristine would _also_ be very expensive... “We wanted to negotiate an alliance,” he said carefully. “Because there is a powerful dark mage who could very well take over and destroy the world with an army of demons. We’ve come to plead for help.”

Wei-Ying-courtesy-name-Wuxian’s expression got a little strained, as if he were trying to hold back a laugh. “What’s your name?”

“Ah, getting ahead of myself again!” Dorian said grandly. “Dorian of House Pavus, formerly of Minrathous and most recently of Skyhold, the seat of the Inquisition. At your service.”

“Dorian of House Pavus.” A smile of irrepressible hilarity was beginning to trickle through the edges of his face like candlelight through a sheet of paper. “You’ve come to the right place. We have some experience in dark lords, as it happens.”

***

Dorian was invited to sit at this Wei-Ying-courtesy-name-Wuxian’s table, though he did not bother to introduce his companion--was _that_ the Chief Cultivator? Which one of them was the Chief Cultivator? Hopefully neither of them were, though Wei Wuxian (as he clarified cheerfully when Dorian attempted carefully to call him by the full appellation) was talking enough for it. Dorian preferred that option, because now that they were all sitting at the table, Dorian could see that the other man, the river-ice one, was glaring daggers at Bull across the room.

“I hope my colleagues didn’t cause you too much trouble while I was recovering,” Dorian said cautiously.

“Ha, no. It was funny, actually. At least, I thought it was funny.”

All Dorian’s Tevinter instincts were on edge--no matter how easy and friendly Wei Wuxian seemed, Dorian still couldn’t shake the feeling that he was at one of his mother’s tea parties, and he needed to mind himself and speak very, very carefully. He risked a glance over his shoulder--Lavellan looked stressed. Bull was frowning back at the man-shaped block of river-ice, though it was a little… assessing. 

“Dorian,” Bull said. His voice, which he hadn’t particularly raised, carried across the room and made the teacups rattle. “Can they understand me?”

“No,” Dorian said, because they couldn’t unless Dorian willed it.

Bull nodded once. Very casually, as if commenting on the weather, he said, “What do I always say about the pretty ones?”

 _They’re the worst,_ Dorian heard as an echo in his mind. _Watch yourself_. “I don’t want to hear any of your stupid jokes,” he said with a haughty sniff, and turned back to the pretty ones. “Some people have no manners,” he commented in a low voice, because that was usually a good way to ingratiate yourself with difficult people. 

Wei Wuxian snorted and hid a smile in his sleeve. “Don’t look at me if you want manners,” he said merrily.

He seemed good-natured enough--Dorian had a bit of a knack for getting the measure of a person, and he had an inkling that this man might be someone he could genuinely like. And… well, pretty as anything; that often helped a great deal when Dorian set out to like someone.

But none of those thoughts! Leave those to Bull, at least until they got the lay of the land and Dorian could be sure he wasn’t adding to the incipient diplomatic incident. “You mentioned you have experience in dark lords,” he said. “May I ask…?” 

Wei Wuxian opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated just long enough for the river-ice one, the exquisitely beautiful one, to intone, “The right thing is rarely the popular thing.”

Wei Wuxian’s expression grew rueful. “Isn’t that the truth,” he murmured. “Let’s just say it was half sabotage, half bad circumstances with no good solution, half me having zero sense of self preservation, and half the corruption of resentful energy. Lan Zhan, you can stop despairing of my arithmetic quite so loudly, thank you--oh! Oh, you haven’t been introduced. This is Lan Zhan, courtesy name Wangji, the Chief Cultivator and my very best friend.”

Dorian nodded politely; Lan Wangji barely inclined his head in response. Dorian privately marveled at the truly _blistering_ civility of it, admired how efficiently he had been made to feel an inch tall, and filed that expression and mien away in his mental archives for later practice and personal use. Truly he was sitting before a master. His mother would have been utterly green with envy. She would have taken notes.

***

Dorian explained everything. Wei Wuxian asked a lot of questions, and had a lot of comments to make--by the startled expressions and the uncomfortable fidgeting of the white-robed teenagers around them, Dorian gleaned that they thought Wei Wuxian was violating some kind of rule of politeness towards him, but he didn’t see anything to be offended about. Wei Wuxian only seemed… relaxed. Familiar. Like he didn’t have the energy to waste on being overly formal with strangers.

Well, if he could dish it out, he would just have to take it as well, so Dorian modulated his own formality down to match. Mirroring was a useful thing to do in negotiations anyway, or when trying to make an ally, or (he supposed) a friend. 

“Oh, please, call me my given name,” he said cheerfully, an hour into the discussion. “Just Dorian is fine, really.”

That made the icy one--Lan Wangji--give him one of those dagger-looks, and Dorian braced himself for a diplomatic incident. Wei Wuxian only blinked at him several times, and then laughed aloud, and then said, “Seems quick, but if you say so!”

“Exactly, why not,” Dorian said, doubling down on the diplomatic incident. It was like a laboratory experiment: You make something explode on purpose, just a small one in a controlled environment to see what the explosion looks like, and then in the future you know the warning signs for a bigger one and how to put out that particular kind of magical, sticky purple fire.

“You know,” Wei Wuxian said, and laughed again as he said, “Usually people are trying to get me to stop using their familiar names!”

“Well, you are welcome to mine, if you like,” Dorian said with his best smile. “I’ve always believed in being friendly with potential allies, don’t you agree?”

 _Tone down the flirting, Dorian_ , he said to himself as he calmly took in another blizzard of a glare from the Chief Cultivator while Wei Wuxian agreed enthusiastically that friends were the best allies. _The flirting was what got Bull off on the wrong foot._

And then Lan Wangji shifted closer to Wei Wuxian and put his hand on Wei Wuxian’s knee under the table, and Dorian thought, _Oh._ **_Oh_** _. Ohhhhhh!_

Quite an effective little explosion, this. Nicely controlled lab conditions. Dorian felt like he had a solid grasp on the situation now--he’d been the target of quite a few dirty looks from jealous lovers over the years, and he knew precisely how to put out that fire.

He twisted around. “Bull, darling,” he said, keeping a careful hold of the translation spell so that they would continue to understand _exactly_ what he was saying. “Won’t you be a sweetheart and get me something to eat?”

Maker bless Bull, really; he didn’t even hesitate. “You got it, big guy,” he said with a wry grin, and got to his enormous feet to go talk to the waiter. Somehow. Trust Bull to know how to order food within an hour of hurling himself at a new language. 

Dorian turned back, satisfied. You couldn’t pull an impromptu trick like that with Lavellan, and certainly not with Cole, but Bull had probably known five minutes ago what play Dorian was going to make.

“Would either of you like to join me for a meal? I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but I’m starving.”

“Oh, I could eat,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’ve heard this inn has an amazing spicy beef dish--”

 _Spice_. Maker, _yes_. He hadn’t had proper spice since he’d left Tevinter. His mouth watered at the very thought. “Oh, Bull!” Dorian sang across the common room.

***

The spicy beef was _incredible_ , and the rice wine (which Wei Wuxian insisted on buying since Dorian was getting the food) was even more incredible, and the dutiful kiss Bull had dropped into his cheek when he brought back the food was-- _not_ incredible, definitely not, Dorian wasn’t thinking about it, and anyway it was just so that the Chief Cultivator wouldn’t think that anyone was trying to flirt with his lover! Not a big deal!

Dorian was very drunk and it was only four o’clock in the afternoon, which he felt terribly accomplished about. 

Wei Wuxian was also drunk, and he’d scooted around to Dorian’s side of the table so he could scribble diagrams on bits of paper and they could drunkenly yell at each other about what Dorian was calling “magic” and what Wei Wuxian was calling “cultivation”, and what Dorian called “The Fade” and what Wei Wuxian called, alternately, “spiritual energy” and “resentful energy” depending on some odd factor that Dorian hadn’t quite wrapped his head around yet.

The Chief Cultivator was looking… conflicted, whenever Dorian bothered to glance at him, which was less and less often. But Dorian caught him, now and then, giving very fond, soft looks to Wei Wuxian and very suspicious looks towards Dorian.

Wei Wuxian, as it turned out, was something of a scholar himself--he was _rapt_ with fascination when Dorian drunkenly held forth about the research he’d been doing on time magic with his former mentor and his current projects on Corypheus’ corruption. Then Dorian offhandedly mentioned something about death magic, and Wei Wuxian, very drunk at that point, shrieked and grabbed both his arms and shook him a little, and shouted, “ _You’re_ a necromancer? _I’m_ a necromancer! Let’s talk about corpse puppets! Would you like to be friends!” and Dorian, who was, firstly, _also_ very drunk and, secondly, had not had so many people be enthusiastic about his friendship that the novelty for it had yet worn off, agreed immediately and said, “Yes, let’s. And let’s get more of this excellent wine.”

“Wei Ying,” said Lan Wangji, at the same moment that several of the little teenagers in white said, “Senior Wei…” and Lavellan, somewhere behind Dorian and across the room said, “Um, Dorian?”

“We should leave now, if we are to reach the Cloud Recesses before curfew,” Lan Wangji said, and Wei Wuxian made a face.

“Yeah, okay, yes, fine,” he said. “I guess you need to talk to Lord--" Wei Wuxian here said a name that the translation spell shoved into Dorian's brain as an impression of a cool, clear forest pond, abundant and overgrown with green plants, "--and start summoning sect leaders about the… thingy,” he said, flicking his fingers at the rest of Dorian’s party, across the room.

“Inqui--quisition,” Dorian supplied through a hiccup. “It’s quite alright, Wei Wuxian, whatever the Cloud Recesses are sound much more comfortable than this inn, we can just keep drinking once we get there--”

“Alcohol is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Wangji said.

“I beg your _pardon_ ,” Dorian replied.

***

Lavellan took the opportunity to drag Dorian off by his arm on the walk back. “Dorian, what’s going on?”

“Diplomacy,” he said brightly. “Very. Very diplomatic diplomacy.”

“It is the middle of the afternoon and you’re falling over drunk.”

“Very diplomatic. Have you never met a diplomacy, Inquisitor? Diplomat. Have you never met a diplomat? They’re sloshed _all the time._ Part of the job.” He patted Lavellan’s shoulder. “Leave it to me, we’re getting on _very_ well. Wei Wuxian’s lover hasn’t thought about murdering me for over an hour now. He thinks he’s being very subtle with his facial expressions but he and my mother seem to have learned off the same lexicon, because I can read him at thirty paces. I’m doing a brilliant job, Inquisitor, and frankly you ought to give me a raise. And some more wine money.”

“Uh-huh,” said Lavellan, clearly skeptical. Silly man. Dorian patted his face. Lavellan batted him away. “What about the rest of it?”

“Rest of it?” Dorian said. “What rest of it? Have you done something different with your hair? It looks _very_ nice today, I should have said earlier. Did you have any of the wine?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were… with Bull?”

Dorian peered at him. “Inquisitor, I don’t know how to break this to you, but we’re with Bull every day these days. He’s very large. Do you have trouble spotting him? Should I point him out for you? Perhaps we can paint him orange--”

Lavellan, clearly trying to stifle laughter, said, “No, idiot, how long have you been _involved_ with Bull?”

Dorian suppressed the urge to splutter. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you might mean,” he said airily.

“You just seemed… You know. _Involved_. Like romantically.”

At the last word, Dorian did choke. “I _beg_ your _pardon_.”

***

It was somewhere around midnight, and Dorian and Wei Wuxian had snuck right back out of the Cloud Recesses as soon as the Inquisition had gotten settled in the guest houses. Wei Wuxian had arrived on Dorian’s porch and said, “I’m mostly sober now and that can’t be allowed to happen, come with me,” and Dorian reflected to himself _Wow, he gets me_ , and quite happily followed him outside the boundaries to Wei Wuxian’s secret cache of liquor, which they had proceeded to decimate.

“Wei Wuxian,” he said, cradling one of the beautiful porcelain jugs in both hands. This liquor was even better than the stuff they’d had in the inn earlier. Incredible. What a nice place this was. Good food, good wine, and everyone in sight had an absolutely _exquisite_ fashion sense. Dorian was already thinking about growing out his hair and getting one of those pin... crown... things. Shiny thing. Top of the head. Very stylish.

“Call me,” Wei Wuxian intoned, “Elder brother Wei.”

Dorian squinted at him. “ _Elder_ brother? I’m fairly sure I’m solidly older than you.”

“Doesn’t matter. Do it. Dare you.”

Well, _dares--_ that changed things. “Alright,” Dorian said amicably. “Elder brother Wei.”

Wei Wuxian made a gurgling spasm of laughter into his liquor bottle.

Dorian mentally prodded at the translation spell. Ah well. If they were moving onto the part of the evening where Dorian would be made to say ridiculous things for Wei Wuxian’s amusement (the nuances of which might be entirely lost on the imperfect translation spell, getting more imperfect as Dorian’s inebriation levels increased) then that was all to the good. Diplomacy. Bonding. Forging alliances.

“Elder brother Wei,” he said. “I have a very important question for you.”

Wei Wuxian took a long draft from his bottle, straightened his back, and said solemnly, “Go ahead, younger brother. Elder brother is attentive.”

“Will we get into very much trouble if we--”

“I love this,” Wei Wuxian said. “I love all of this.”

“I haven’t said it yet.”

“Let’s do it. I’m drunk, you’re drunk, it’s a nice night.”

The wording of that twanged a little warning bell in the back of Dorian’s head. “Hey, wait a second, your lover won’t be mad at me for keeping you out so late, will he?”

Wei Wuxian choked on his wine. “My _what_ ,” he spluttered.

Dorian blinked at him. “Uh.” Shit. Cultural differences? Cultural differences. He tried to drag the drifting, drunken fragments of his mind into a functional collection. “Companion…?”

Wei Wuxian was laughing--cackling really. He’d been half-lounging against a tree, and now he fell over entirely. “Ha! You mean Lan Zhan? Ha ha! Lan Zhan isn’t my _lover,_ why would you think that, what a thing to say, I’m sorry for laughing but it’s just too funny--”

Dorian took another drunken squint at the precise tone of Wei Wuxian’s raucous cackling. Faintly nervous? “Sorry,” he said carefully. “I jumped to conclusions, I suppose.”

Wei Wuxian waved this off with an energetic _no-no-no_ gesture that went on several seconds longer than was entirely necessary. Dorian peered at him suspiciously. “Lan Zhan is just my best friend! My soulmate, really, he’s been my soulmate our whole lives, ever since the first time I laid eyes on him I knew--”

Dorian frowned. Drunkenly poked the translation spell. “Your soulmate. But not your lover.”

“Right!” Wei Wuxian said brightly, as if that made any sense. “Just friends! Good, good, good friends. And his son is also my son. Just two good friends having a son together, being soulmates.”

Dorian blinked slowly at him. “Okay.” He shook himself. “Okay. Okay. Wei Wuxi--Elder brother Wei,” he said. “I generally have a fairly casual relationship with honesty and so forth at the best of times--”

“Lying is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses,” Wei Wuxian said with a helpful air. “Just so you’re aware.”

Dorian swore colorfully under his breath.

“Yes, I know,” Wei Wuxian said, heaving a sigh. “But Lan Zhan gets all huffy about strangers obeying the rules.”

“Only strangers?” Dorian snipped.

“Yeah, pretty much. I’m allowed to do as I please, apparently.” Wei Wuxian gestured to the pile of empty liquor bottles and added, with great fondness, “He smuggles all of these in for me.”

Dorian swore again. “He breaks one of the rules to smuggle liquor in for you, he glares at anyone who flirts with you--”

“Has someone tried to flirt with me today?” Wei Wuxian said, puzzled.

“--he puts his hands all over you in front of people and, let me say again, _he smuggles in liquor for you,_ and you haven’t stripped buck naked in front of him and said, ‘Happy Satinalia, handsome, here’s your gift’?”

Wei Wuxian’s face was turning a brilliant shade of red. “Uh! Um!” he said.

“Oh, have I crossed a line?” Dorian said brightly. “It’s the liquor, you really mustn’t mind me, I say all sorts of outrageous things when I’m drunk. Don’t ever take me seriously, that’s the first thing you need to know about me. Anyway, what was I saying? Right. Getting in trouble. Have you ever played necromancy charades? It’s just like regular charades but you use corpses or spirits.”

***

Necromancy charades devolved quickly into yelling about magic/cultivation theory again.

It was the most fun Dorian had had in _years._

***

“Do you think that would work?” Wei Wuxian said with a strange kind of pensiveness.

Dorian stumbled to a stop in the middle of a rant about some of his ideas on theoretical quantum thaumaphysics and gave him a scathing look. “I know more about this than anybody else currently alive in Thedas, of course it’ll work.”

“No, not _that_ ,” Wei Wuxian said. “Of course that will work. We figured that out a hundred years ago, you’ve nailed about eighty percent of it so far but you’re fucking up the last bit, I’ll make Lan Zhan give you copies of our books--”

Dorian briefly considered asking Wei Wuxian to marry him, since apparently he wasn’t actually involved with that so-called soulmate of his.

“--I mean--what you said about. About what I should do with Lan Zhan. Do you think that would work?” 

Dorian immediately set aside the marriage thought. Aw. Aww. All this calling him “elder brother” kept making him forget that Wei Wuxian actually was younger than him. And apparently shy, bless him. “I guarantee that it would,” Dorian said. “I’ve done it five times. It has worked four of those times.”

“What happened the fifth time?”

“The young man was, regrettably, a dedicated heterosexual. He was quite decent about the misunderstanding. Didn’t even run off and blab to anyone. Nice boy, I remember him fondly.”

“Oh,” Wei Wuxian said, with a strange look on his face. “I thought--I thought you meant you’d done it five times to _your_ soulmate.”

“My--my soulmate?”

“The tall one with the horns? Iron Bull, was it?”

Dorian choked on the ideas of _soulmate_ and _The Iron Bull_ colliding together like a horrific runaway chariot accident and remembered, abruptly, that he hadn’t actually finished his earlier thought--he’d gotten all wrapped up in his own rhetoric about having a casual relationship with honesty, and then he’d gotten derailed by the drink and Wei Wuxian’s cheerful report of another random Cloud Recesses rule--

“He is _not_ my soulmate,” Dorian said, aghast. “Maker preserve me. No. Absolutely not. No no no. All of that at the inn earlier, it was just an act. It was because we were getting off on the wrong foot with Lan Wangji and he seemed… threatened.”

“Why would he have been threatened?” Wei Wuxian said, laughing. “He could kick Iron Bull’s ass from here to Caiyi Town and back.”

Dorian opened his mouth. Closed his mouth. Held up one finger, objecting. “Okay, that’s a _whole different argument_ , we can have that argument later, I’m wagering ten bottles of the good alcohol on Bull, you haven’t seen him in a melee-- _shut up, do not distract me_ \--point is! The point is! It was just a little white lie so he’d stop thinking we were trying to flirt with you. I mean, I think we probably _were_ both trying to flirt with you, but that doesn’t mean anything, please don’t take it personally, Bull and I sort of flirt with anything that moves? As a reflex? Well, for me it’s a reflex, for him it’s on purpose--” Dorian snapped his mouth closed. Oh, close one. He’d almost spoiled Bull’s whole Big Dumb Brute persona. Dorian wasn’t about to go ruining Bull’s reputation with accusations of _intentionality_ or anything like that. “Point is! Point is--okay, listen, the only reason I’m admitting this to you is because I’m extremely drunk--I might have had sex with Bull a few times. That said, he is _not_ my lover, and _certainly_ not my soulmate. Sorry for misleading you, it wasn’t malicious.”

Wei Wuxian frowned at him, puzzled. “Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why isn’t he your lover?” 

“Maker’s breath, how long have you got? Where can I even begin? He’s a Qunari, for one thing, his people and my people have been mortal enemies for generations. More importantly, he’s. You know. The _worst_. He’s an oaf and a brute and he _puns. In public._ ”

“Hm,” said Wei Wuxian, all noncommittal but a _pointed_ and _meaningful_ kind of noncommittal, and they went back to necromancy charades. 

(Within a few minutes, Cole appeared at the godawful sound of Wei Wuxian’s flute and made kicked-puppy faces at them about it. Dorian had to stop the game, and then explain to Wei Wuxian about Cole being a spirit, and--

“A _spirit_? No shit! Wow! We have to go tell Lan Zhan--”

“Let’s not,” Dorian groaned. “I’m too drunk to go up the mountain. Here, watch this, this is convenient: Cole, go tell Lan Wangji that you’re a spirit of compassion--”

“Alright, Dorian,” Cole said, and vanished in a blink.

Dorian peered blearily at the spot where he’d stood. “Your soulmate won’t hurt him, right?”

“A good spirit? No, of course not. He’ll just get very excited and try to play music at him, probably, don’t worry about it.”)

***

It devolved, again, into yelling about magic, and then somewhere around half past three in the morning Wei Wuxian had a _brilliant_ epiphany, and had to pace in circles around a tree for five minutes, shouting. Dorian took frantic notes on his wax tablet just as quickly as he could manage while shouting right back about theorems and equations, and Wei Wuxian shouted about experiments and control groups and Dorian shouted about stable lab conditions and how they could possibly even test something like that and _but where are we going to find a piece of dragonbone that big at this time of night_ and Wei Wuxian said there were probably loads in the Lan sect warehouses, and they gathered up their notes and stumbled drunkenly back to the Cloud Recesses, clutching onto each other so they didn’t weave face-first into the trees or off the edge of the steep little paths.

Dawn was nearly breaking as they made it back to the entrance.

Dorian spotted a distinctive silhouette and, even drunk, didn’t have a moment of hesitation. “Bull! Bull! Bull, Bull, the Iron Bull, good morning, say good morning to us, your friends, soon to be the most famous two theoreticians in--well, the entire known world, I suppose. Bull!”

Bull, sitting on the ground in front of a rock wall, turned slightly to give them a smile over his shoulder. “Morning, big guy.” And then, in an elegant dialect of the local language, he rumbled, “Good morning, young master Wei,” and the only reason Dorian knew it was the local language rather than Thedosian Common was because the translation spell went _twang-shrrnnn_ in that way that it did.

“Show-off,” Dorian sniffed. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you in bed like all sensible people should be?” 

Bull gestured to the wall. “Bit of light reading, that’s all.” Dorian peered at it in the near-dark--ah, it was the one with all the words carved on it. Dorian’s translation spell only worked for verbal speech, because it read the _intention_ behind an utterance, so he was useless with things like this. 

“It’s the Lan Sect precepts,” Wei Wuxian said.

“The rules,” Dorian translated for Bull. “Wait, one moment--” A tweak, a twist, and… “There. I’ve adjusted the spell, you should be able to understand each other now. Can’t hold this up for long, though, I’m still drunk.”

Bull went tense. “You cast some kind of spell on me?”

“No. Sort of between you and him. Sort of on the air between you. Sort of. You’re fine, it’s fine, Bull, calm down.”

Bull gave him a look and bowed neatly to Wei Wuxian in a way that Dorian found _highly_ suspect. “Can you tell me what this character means?” he said, pointing to one of them fairly low on the wall.

Wei Wuxian scuffled forward and bent down to squint at it. “Hygiene,” he says. “ _Proper hygiene and personal grooming shall be maintained at all times_.”

“Hm,” Bull said, and nods. “Thanks.”

Dorian kicked him gently in the side with the toe of his boot. “Nobody learns a language just by staring at the words.”

“Yup,” said Bull, staring at the words.

Incredibly rude. Most of the time, Dorian tried to ignore how smart Bull was, because if he started thinking about it too much, he got weak in the knees and then he had to go jerk off and think about Bull’s mouth, and how big Bull’s hands were, and that time he caught Bull bathing in a stream and first got an eyeful--and it was an eye- _full_ \--of thick, _thick_ thighs and an ass that had immediately and bodily hurled Dorian into a divine revelation that he still had not fully recovered from. Even worse, sometimes jerking off about it didn’t work and he would have to endure the indignity of finding himself in Bull’s bed, rubbing himself off against the aforementioned magnificent thighs while Bull put his huge hands all over him and growled encouragement in his ear. Dreadful. Horrible. 

“Bull,” said Dorian, and--oh dear, he was touching Bull’s shoulder, petting it a bit. He decided to pretend it was for balance. So drunk, Dorian! Can’t stand straight! Need to be propped up by large walls of luxury-grade Qunari beef! “Bull, do you want to come break into a warehouse with us? In case we need a battering ram? Your thick skull might come in useful.”

“I’m pretty sure this one says, _Stealing is forbidden_ ,” Bull said conversationally, pointing at a rule on the wall. 

“It does,” Wei Wuxian said. “But technically we’re only borrowing. Also there’s one over here that says _Do not use excessive flavorings in food_ , so.”

“Hm,” Bull said, giving an assessing glance across the wall. “Let’s not cause any more diplomatic incidents, eh, Dorian? Especially when they’ve given us all these clear, convenient instructions on, you know, how to not cause diplomatic incidents.”

Wei Wuxian laughed. “Ah, it’s fine, we’re not hurting anybody.”

“Also the other diplomatic incident that we were concerned about, it isn’t actually an issue,” Dorian added. “So I don’t want to hear any vulgar flirting from you today, Bull.”

“You sure that it’s no issue?” Bull hummed. “Someone was upset that you two never came home last night. He was wandering around last night. Had Cole trailing after him, too, muttering about stuff he ought to keep his nose out of, you know how he is.”

Dorian gave Wei Wuxian a significant look. Wei Wuxian went pink in the cheeks, made a face at him. A moment later, he turned speculative and squatted down next to Bull. “Dorian Pavus is nice, don’t you think?”

“Oi,” Dorian said sharply. He couldn’t have people thinking he was _nice,_ any more than Bull could afford to have people thinking he was _intentional_. His reputation depended on it.

The corner of Bull’s mouth quirked, as if he could hear Dorian thinking all of this. “Definitely in my top five favorite people who could randomly burst out in demons at any second and kill us all, yeah. But you’d better go quick if you want to break into a warehouse.” Bull leaned forward and tapped another rule. “This one says they all wake up at five o’clock in the morning.”

“What sort of hell place is this,” Dorian demanded.

“Nobody has ever been able to give me an answer on that,” Wei Wuxian said as he stood back up, brushing off the skirts of his robes. They were rather rumpled and leaf-stained after romping around playing necromancy charades in the forest, and lying about on the ground drinking, all louche and decadent. What a _good night_.

“Okay. Well. Have fun staring at a wall, Bull. We’re going to go change the face of magic as we know it.”

Bull looked away from the wall, frowning. “You’re doing what now?” 

“Elder brother Wei,” Dorian said grandly, “had a brilliant breakthrough, and we are going to revolutionize everything you thought you knew about magic. And, at some point, sober up.”

“We should probably be sober before we do any experiments,” Wei Wuxian said, squinting into the middle distance.

“Dorian,” Bull said, with a suspiciously casual tone. “Do me a favor, big guy, and drop that translation spell? Not right now, give me ten seconds. Yeah?”

“Sure,” Dorian said slowly.

Bull immediately turned to Wei Wuxian. “When he drops the spell, I’d like you to tell me the words for _magic, demons, dangerous_ , and _supervision_.”

“Go fuck yourself,” said Dorian.

“No, that’s fair,” Wei Wuxian said. “That’s pretty fair, actually. Who are you tattling to?”

“Your _soulmate_ , probably,” Dorian said snidely, just because he wanted to lob that ball at The Iron Bull and see what he did with it. 

***

They were elbow-deep in the storage warehouse, and they would probably have made better progress if they hadn’t kept stopping to yell at each other about materials and experiments and so forth.

Lan Wangji appeared in the doorway, stern and glowering (with Cole right behind him peeking anxiously around his arm), and Wei Wuxian immediately dropped everything he was doing. “Hi Lan Zhan! Morning, young master Cole! You’ll never believe this amazing thing we discovered, we’re about to found a whole new cultivation path, it’s amazing! Younger brother Pavus says there’s nothing like it on his side of the world either!”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji said. “Have you slept?”

(“Worry,” Cole murmured, drifting over to Dorian’s side. “Worry, waiting, eyes tired and heavy, watching the moon move, _where_ **_is_ ** _he?_ A song in his head. Sitting at an instrument, his heart in his hands, his hands on the strings. _Will it call him back?_ ”)

“Sleep is for nerds, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said. “I got plenty of sleep when I was dead!”

“You were _dead?”_ Dorian demanded, frozen in the middle of patting Cole’s shoulder. _“When? How long?_ How did you get better? Why are you only mentioning this now? Wei Wuxian, we’ve been friends for nearly twenty-four hours now and I’m only just now finding out that _you were dead once?”_

Perhaps this was not something to be glib about, because Lan Wangji’s face went all shuttered and ice-cold again (“No,” whispered Cole, so quiet only Dorian can hear him, “ _Gone, he’s gone, he can’t be gone_ , only just stopped screaming inside but the echoes keep ringing, it was so dark and cold, years of winter, screaming, the cliff--”). That frozen expression was just like what Dorian’s mother’s did when she was really upset. Lan Wangji shoved Wei Wuxian out the door and then glared at Dorian too until he put down the things he was holding and shuffled out after them, pulling Cole along with him. 

Lan Wangji locked the warehouse doors, put a ward on them so strong that it made Dorian’s eyes itch just to look at it, and said, “Excuse us,” in a very pointed way before dragging Wei Wuxian off by his wrist. 

“I’m being made to nap and sober up now, younger brother!” Wei Wuxian called over his shoulder. “I’ll meet you later, okay!”

“Take him home, wrap him up, keep him safe-- _he’s not gone, he’s_ **_not_** ,” Cole said, and Dorian had to turn and put a finger to Cole’s mouth to quiet him.

***

Dorian woke up around noon with a throbbing headache and a perfectly clear memory of the night before.

An almost perfectly clear memory of the night before.

He washed his face, found someone to give him food, and shuffled back out into the stabbingly bright sunshine.

He found Bull still reading the wall, this time with one of the little teenagers next to him, pointing to various characters and saying them aloud while Bull listened and nodded. 

“Hah!” Dorian said triumphantly. “I _knew_ you weren’t just learning by staring at words!”

“They use a lot of poetic idioms,” Bull said. “The kid’s helping.”

“Don’t call him _kid,_ Bull, he’s the Chief Cultivator’s son,” Dorian said. Also apparently Wei Wuxian’s son. Dorian wasn’t sure how that worked. How did one end up sharing a son with someone and never actually get around to presenting oneself naked in their bedroom for their delectation? 

He bowed to the boy. “We haven’t properly met, I think. Dorian of House Pavus, formerly of Minrathous, most recently of Skyhold. I’m a member of the Inquisition.”

The boy smiled and bowed back, much lower. “Lan Yuan, courtesy name Sizhui.”

“Has my enormous friend here terrified you into helping him? If you’d like to run away, I’ll distract him for you. I’m very noble and self-sacrificing, you see.”

Lan Sizhui smiled and ducked his head. “No, not at all. I don’t mind helping, and he’s learning so quickly.”

“Of course he is,” sighed Dorian, trying valiantly not to think about just how much of a quick study Bull might be in other, more naked contexts. “Bull, are you fluent yet?”

“Getting there,” Bull said. “Having a fun time with it, anyway.”

Dorian studied him and abruptly dropped the translation spell for a moment of privacy. “Bull, is this wall secretly some kind of pornography? I can’t remember ever seeing you so focused on something that wasn’t somebody’s perky ass. How long have you been staring at it?”

“Hm,” said Bull. “Followed you out when you left yesterday to go drinking. Been here since then. Other people stop by sometimes to help me out.”

He had a strange look on his face--intent. Almost hungry. Dorian wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but he was almost never sure what to make of Bull, and so this didn’t bother him. “Bull, please don’t take this to mean that I care about your well-being, but are you alright?”

“Yeah, big guy, I’m fine.”

Dorian watched him dubiously for a moment. “Right, well. I’m off to find the Inquisitor and apologize.”

“For running off and leaving him without a translator? Nah, he’s fine. Cole’s been doing a great job.”

Dorian huffed and sat himself neatly on a nearby rock, crossing his legs, and pulled the translation spell up again. “Then I suppose you’ll just have to endure my sparkling conversation until Wei Wuxian wakes up and is allowed to come out and play with me.”

“How late were you up?” Lan Sizhui asked. He was kneeling next to Bull, his hands folded prettily in his lap. Just clean and tidy all over, this boy, neat as a pin. Dorian couldn’t relate.

“Past five in the morning,” he admitted, “because your father came to drag us out of the warehouses where we were pilfering supplies.”

“Supplies?” the boy asked, tilting his head. “For what?” 

“Ah! Wei Wuxian--brilliant man, really, what a windfall to run into someone like him, can’t remember the last time I had such fun--Wei Wuxian and I stumbled on a discovery last night that’s going to change the entire landscape of magical scholarship. Or cultivation, as you call it.”

“Amazing!” Lan Sizhui lit up like a Wintersend festival and Dorian, despite himself, crashed sideways into _Oh, isn’t he just a little dear?_ and recognized far too much of his grandmother in himself for comfort. “How did you come to make this discovery? Please, I am so interested! Senior Wei is a true genius, he introduced dozens of new talisman arrays and inventions in his previous life, and I’m sure he’s developing many more now.”

“A captive and willing audience, my favorite thing!” Dorian said grandly. “Well, young man, let me explain--” and then Dorian mentally reached for that brilliant discovery that he’d spent hours shouting about with Wei Wuxian about and realized, to his horror, that he couldn’t remember a speck of it. 

He fumbled at his belt pouch for his wax tablet--he’d taken notes! Always take notes. Rigorous and disciplined note-taking will save your life.

He opened the wooden flaps of the wax tablet and found that he’d written:

_weave it WEAVE IT_

_Twist--like a pastry!!!_

_Sq rt of the declination equ. <-IMPORTANT _

_Madrilari’s increment--offset 12????_

_Motherfucking tabulations_

_Fade flow - > triple phase point, water/ice/steam _

Well, shit. He remembered that they’d desperately needed a large piece of dragonbone roughly the dimensions of Wei Wuxian’s bamboo flute, and a barrel of very salty water, and four flattish pebbles.

“Forgot it, didn’t you,” Bull said. Smug bastard.

“No,” Dorian replied, defensive. “I’ve got about half of it, and Wei Wuxian probably has the other half.”

And speak of the devil, before the words had even finished passing his lips, Dorian heard the sound of running feet and Wei Wuxian himself came barreling around the corner. “Younger brother!” he said urgently, skidding to a stop. “Do you--oh, good morning, Sizhui, your other father was looking for you,” with a vague gesture back the way he’d come. “Younger brother, tell me you remember anything of what we--”

Dorian handed him the wax tablet, remembered a moment later that Wei Wuxian wouldn’t be able to read it, and took it back. “No,” he grumbled.

“We needed a bag of chicken wings for something,” Wei Wuxian said, eyes wild. “It was super, super important.”

“We wanted snacks,” Dorian said morosely. He remembered that part at least.

Wei Wuxian groans aloud, hands on his hips and face tilted up to the heavens.

***

Lan Zhan was being… _smug_.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Wei Wuxian told him, tugging off his dusty outer robes and hurling them at Lan Zhan’s head. (Lan Zhan, of course, plucked them effortlessly out of the air without ruffling a hair out of place.) Wei Wuxian stomped behind the changing screen for the rest. “I don’t want to hear any of it. Why are you being so mean to me, gege? We were about to change everything the whole world knows about cultivation.”

Lan Zhan had laid out clothes for him, the appropriate level of formality for the evening’s banquet--one of his nicer black brocade robes, clean trousers.

“Hm,” said Lan Zhan. Still sounded a bit smug.

“I said I don’t want to hear it, didn’t I?” he said, pulling off the layers of his inner robes. “Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan, I’m small, my feelings are very fragile, why are you bullying me?” 

“Perhaps rules exist for a reason.”

“Lan Zhan!” he shrieked. “Are you quoting _Drinking is forbidden in the Cloud Recesses_ at me? _Me??_ Your zhiji?”

“If Wei Ying had not been so drunk, Wei Ying might now remember the fruits of his discussion.”

“Heartless,” Wei Wuxian sniffed. He ruffled through the pile of clothes for the innermost layer. “Lan Zhan, you haven’t given me underthings in this stack.” 

“Wei Ying’s other inner layers are being laundered.”

“Lend me one of yours then! I can’t wear the one I have on, it’s all sweaty.”

He stood there, bare to the waist, and listened to Lan Zhan’s soft footsteps as he went to the wardrobe and then approached the screen. A flash of a thought, _What if he comes around the screen to hand it to me and sees me like this?_ And then a second flash, that image that Dorian Pavus had put in his head, the idea of baring himself to Lan Zhan like a gift, the way Lan Zhan might stop, his mouth going soft and a little open with surprise. The way he might sway half a step forward, his hand reaching out unconsciously--

Lan Zhan passed a white undershirt around the side of the screen without stepping past it himself. Nondescript, undecorated. He owned twelve that were all exactly alike; Wei Wuxian had counted them once. He took the shirt, careful not to let his fingers brush Lan Zhan’s. “Thank you.” He dressed quickly, not giving himself any time to linger over his weird thoughts, and stepped around the screen as he buckled the belt around his waist. “How is it? Do I look tolerably presentable?” 

“Mn,” Lan Zhan said. After a pause, he added with what seemed to be a little difficulty, “Wei Ying looks nice.”

Wei Wuxian tilted his head a little, utterly mystified, and quickly laughed to cover it up. “Wow! I should dress up more often if Lan Zhan is going to flatter me like that!” 

Lan Zhan turned away, his ears pink. “It is not flattery,” he said, picking up his own banquet clothes and brushing past Wei Ying for his turn behind the screen.

Wei Wuxian’s heart stung a little in a familiar sort of way, but ah, what was the point of being disappointed all of a sudden, after all this time? A hundred times, a thousand times of teasing Lan Zhan and having him turn away, frowning or pink-cheeked or both, and _now_ he suddenly felt something about it? Tsk. That wouldn’t do.

He swept the sting away as firmly as he’d swept away his earlier intrusive thoughts about Lan Zhan seeing him bared, and laughed aloud again. “Lan Zhan, really, you make it too easy to tease you! Someone will come along one day and try to play with you and you won’t even know what to do about it!”

A muttered comment, just barely too quiet for Wei Wuxian to hear over the rustle of cloth as Lan Zhan changed.

He gasped. “Hanguang-jun, are you being a little catty? Out loud? Say it again so I can hear!” He settled himself at the low table and tried not to glance at the screen, at the indistinct shadow of Lan Zhan moving behind it.

“I said, Wei Ying also does not know what to do about it.”

The blood rushed to his face all at once. “Ha, Lan Zhan, what are you talking about?” 

“Your new friend,” Lan Zhan said. The cloth-rustling noises paused, and Wei Wuxian could almost feel the weight of Lan Zhan’s glare through the screen.

“Is Lan-er-gege jealous of me having a friend? Does Lan-er-gege want to be my only friend in the world?” He propped his elbow on the table and put his chin in his hand. 

Lan Zhan conspicuously did not answer, and the beat of silence was agonizing enough that Wei Wuxian had to laugh it into exile again.

“Er-gege doesn’t have to be jealous! He can come play with me whenever he likes!” his silly fool mouth said, and then, hearing himself aloud, he quickly added, “Night hunts or drinking or uncovering interesting new theories of cultivation, whatever! Should we go night hunting again soon? Run around all over, going where the chaos is?”

Lan Zhan emerged from behind the screen, resplendent in one of his best sets of robes. Wei Wuxian’s breath caught. “Yes,” Lan Zhan said. He went to the mirror and started putting his hair up, adding with a little sniff, “Wei Ying’s friend is overfamiliar.”

“Wei Ying is also overfamiliar, so doesn’t that cancel it all out? Isn’t it just regular familiarity, then?” He grinned and leaned forward. “Familiarity isn’t so bad, you know. You hear all _sorts_ of things when you’re familiar with someone.” 

Lan Zhan’s back went stiff and his hands paused for a moment. His expression flattened. “Oh?” 

“All sorts of things! Like how Dorian Pavus and Iron Bull _aren’t in love_.”

Lan Zhan shot him an outright suspicious glance from the corner of his eye.

“It’s true! Juicy gossip, right?”

“Gossip is forbidden,” Lan Zhan said, purely reflex. He returned to fixing his hair. “And you are wrong. They are obvious.”

“Nope. Dorian Pavus told me himself. They’re not together.”

Lan Zhan made a soft dismissive noise. “They are keeping it secret. Badly.”

“Well--do you want to hear the juicier part?”

“Gossip is forbidden,” Lan Zhan said again, but his eyes flicked again to Wei Wuxian for a heartbeat and he made no effort to change the subject, so! That was basically a yes!

Wei Wuxian grinned and leaned even further forward, lowering his voice to a stage whisper. “They sleep together.”

Lan Zhan shot him a flat look. “As do we.”

“No, I mean, they…” His cheeks stung with a blush suddenly. Ahh! Why was he like this? “They’re... intimate. Physically. They have _sex._ But Dorian Pavus says they’re not in love. He says they’re not zhiji.”

Lan Zhan’s miniscule expressions became faintly prim. “Ridiculous.”

“Right?” Wei Wuxian threw his arms up in exasperation. “They clearly are, right? Dorian Pavus can’t go five minutes without mentioning Iron Bull, and Iron Bull looks at him all the time, and Dorian touches him without thinking about it--Imagine! Imagine having your zhiji right in front of you and not even being able to admit it to yourself! Aren’t you glad we’re not that stupid, Lan Zhan?”

Lan Zhan’s face softened a little, a ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Yes.”

“Yeah,” Wei Wuxian agreed, feeling all melty and fond on the inside. “I feel like I ought to help them.”

“Do not meddle.”

“ _That’s_ not a precept, and don’t try to trick me into thinking that it is!”

“Meddling is rude. Rudeness _is_ forbidden.” Lan Zhan smoothed the last lock of hair into place and rose from the mirror, coming to stand by the table, offering his hand to help Wei Wuxian up.

Wei Wuxian looked up at him, pouting. “But isn’t it righteous and honorable to help those in need, Hanguang-jun? And who could be more needful than someone who cannot see such an important truth? Huh? What if I hadn’t been able to see that you were my zhiji, wouldn’t you have wanted someone to help me?”

Utterly straight-faced and without withdrawing his extended hand, Lan Zhan said, “I hope every day that Wei Ying will get help.”

Wei Wuxian squawked in protest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm hoping that the nuances of how the translation spell works came through -- we'll get more deeply interested in "the words someone says" vs "what someone hears through the spell" later!!
> 
> In next week's chapter: The Ordeal gets Particularly Mortifying.
> 
> (I'm on [tumblr](http://ariaste.tumblr.com) in my fannish identity! I'm on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/_alexrowland) in my professional author identity! Come say hi!)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are unfamiliar with DA:I, there's a glossary in the endnotes with a few of the unfamiliar terms you'll encounter in this chapter :D
> 
> A thousand thanks to my beta-readers and cheerleaders/hand-holders for this chapter, especially Dove and Dira Sudis <3

Banquets were universal no matter where you went for your diplomatic incidents. The hall was gorgeously and tastefully appointed, of course, though Dorian personally preferred more vibrant colors than the wan, washed-out pastel blues and crisp whites that dominated the entire complex of buildings. They made him feel… quiet. Serene. It meant that he was in danger of his mind settling to a stillness that might allow him to perceive his own thoughts, and _that_ was an even more terrifying and embarrassing prospect than imagining that warm glint in Bull’s eye right before he said something _dreadful_ that would set Dorian’s blood on fire.

Rather than eating at a long table (most common in Ferelden, which meant he would have had to endure all manner of indignities, ranging from being elbowed by his neighbors to having to watch the person across from him chew with their mouth open), each place setting had its own little table and its own cushion. The amount of personal space he was being afforded was nothing short of luxurious.

The downside, of course, was that this arrangement made it very difficult to sit next to a friend and covertly whisper through most of dinner. No flirting, either, not that there was anyone for Dorian to flirt with who was both a) interesting and b) available. 

He sat at the little table beside Bull’s and pretended like it wasn’t significant. Bull was sitting with… exquisite posture, actually, his legs crossed tailor-style and his back very straight, his hands flat on his thighs. He had even gone so far as to put on his Inquisition uniform, which Dorian did _not_ consider fair play in the rules of engagement. It made his shoulders look like something Dorian wanted to sling his legs over. He swallowed the dryness from his mouth. “Bull,” he said crisply.

“Evening, Dorian. How’s it going?” 

“Other than the tragic blow to the fields of magical study and research that I experienced this morning? Fine, I suppose.”

“Aw, big guy. That’s too bad,” Bull said, not even trying to hide his smirk.

Dorian glared at the side of his head. “There’s no need to be smug about it.”

“Nah, not smug, just happy that you’re not blowing yourself up or exploding in demons this week.”

“Yes,” Dorian said, snide as anything, “I’m sure you are. And you? Fluent yet?”

“Nah, that’d take a few weeks at least.”

Dorian and his libido were unaccountably disappointed. He despaired of himself and mentally rolled his eyes.

Just then, the Chief Cultivator stalked in, Wei Wuxian sauntering at his side and chattering away at great speed. Lan Wangji settled himself at a table on the other side of the room from Dorian and closer to the head table. Wei Wuxian, without missing a beat, dragged the neighboring table a foot closer and flung himself messily onto the cushion, propping his elbow on the edge and grinning at Lan Wangji.

“Dorian,” Bull said thoughtfully. “Seemed like you had some opinions when you said ‘soulmate’ earlier today.”

“Oh, that.” Dorian heaved a sigh. “Wei Wuxian _says_ it’s just a best friend. He also says they have a son together. But, according to him, it’s _not like that._ ”

“It’s definitely like that,” Bull said in as quiet a voice as he could ever manage, eyeing the pair further up the banquet hall. “Maybe they haven’t gotten their shit together about it yet, but…”

“Anyone with eyes can see it’s like that,” Dorian said dryly, leaning his own elbow on the table.

“Don’t even need two,” Bull agreed, gesturing toward his own face. He’d put on the nice eyepatch, Dorian noted, the dashing and rakish one. Asshole.

“Why do you care, anyway?” 

“Spy habits,” Bull said. “You never know what’s gonna be useful.”

“True enough, I suppose.” Dorian studied him studying them. “Tell you what. You make guesses, and if you get something right that I can confirm from last night, I’ll buy you a beer when we get home to Skyhold.”

The corner of Bull’s mouth quirked in a smile. “Fun game. You got it. But after dinner, eh?” 

“Certainly.”

*

“I don’t suppose you have any alcohol,” Dorian said, following Bull into the guest quarters they’d been assigned.

“It’s forbidden here, Dorian,” Bull said evenly. “Don’t want to start trouble, do you?”

Dorian sighed and sat on the edge of Bull’s bed. Bull sat beside him and started working on his boots. “Well? Go ahead then.” 

“The Chief Cultivator is in love with Wei Wuxian; Wei Wuxian hasn’t noticed,” Bull began. His voice was… different, when he was reciting like this. Like he was delivering a report. “Wei Wuxian is in love as well, but he hasn’t noticed this either.”

“They literally call each other soulmate,” Dorian said acidly. “I think that they’re aware.”

“Eh. There’s loyalty and devotion there. There’s commitment. They’re holding onto each other, and basing long-term plans around each other. But if you asked Wei Wuxian whether he was in love, whether the Chief Cultivator was in love with him, his first reflexive answer would be incredulity and denial.”

“That can’t be true. Of course he’d notice his _own_ feelings at the very least, he’s a genius!”

“So are you, big guy. You tellin’ me you’ve never been a bit stupid about a boy?” 

After a long pause, Dorian said, “I’m formulating precisely how I want to word my very cutting comeback.” 

“Sure,” Bull said encouragingly. “Take your time. Anyway--there’s familiarity there. They’ve known each other a while, I’d say.”

Dorian scoffed. “Are these your very clever spy insights, Bull? I’m not impressed. Give me something better.”

Bull dropped his boots to the floor and put his head on one side, thoughtful. “How much you wanna bet they’re both virgins?”

Dorian was speechless for a full five seconds. “Not a chance! Not a--well…”

“You’re thinking of something.”

“Something my dear new friend said last night,” Dorian said with a grimace. “I made some suggestions of how he could… ingratiate himself, shall we say, and the boy blushed. Perhaps he’s just shy, though, that’s no reason to conclude he’s a virgin.”

“Eh, I have a hunch.” Bull leaned back against the headboards, folding his hands on his stomach. Still in the Inquisition uniform, dammit, looking--fuck, looking like a Satinalia present all tied up with a red bow, just for Dorian. “What about you?”

“Hah! I’m definitely not a virgin, you ought to know that at least.” 

Bull grinned. “Yeah,” he said in a low, rumbling voice that sent shivers up Dorian’s spine. “I sure do know that. But I meant hunches. You got any to share?” 

“None that I can think of.” 

“You still maintaining that ploy from the inn?”

Augh. If only Dorian hadn’t been beset by a fit of honesty, he could have said, _Yes, Bull, he does, and it’s very important that he continue thinking that. I’m very sorry about the inconvenience, but you’ll just have to flirt with me in public, and sit too close, and maybe gallantly kiss my hand, or toss me over your shoulder and haul me off like the spoils of war--_

Dorian cleared his throat. “Oh--that. No, I came clean. Not that he believed me.” He wanted to get as far away from that thought as possible, which was difficult with Bull being so close and so… large. Dorian could practically feel the warmth radiating off him, even from a couple feet away. It made his stomach lurch pleasantly in a way that he was not at all pleased about. “What else? This is your guessing game, and you haven’t earned even a drop of beer for your prize yet. They’re in love and Wei Wuxian hasn’t noticed, they’re both virgins, they’ve known each other for a while--what else?”

“Bet they haven’t kissed.”

“Also not an impressive guess.”

“Bet they haven’t even _held hands._ ”

Dorian made a face. “Now you’re just being disgusting.”

Bull laughed aloud. “If you weren’t so cute when I tease you, I wouldn’t do it, y’know.”

“Rude. I am handsome and elegant at all times.”

“Handsomest and elegantest when you scrunch up your nose like that, for sure.”

Dorian pursed his lips and did not dignify this with an answer.

“Oh,” Bull said, as if he’d just remembered something. “Also they sleep together.”

Dorian paused for a long, horrible moment. “We already established you don’t mean sex.”

“Right,” Bull said. “They share a bed. To sleep.”

“How could you _possibly_ guess that?” 

“Not a guess. They smell like each other. Like they live together and sleep next to each other. Like how you smell a bit like me after we’ve been to Emprise du Lion and shared a tent and you’ve spent the whole night pretending like you’re not trying to warm your footsies on my legs.”

Dorian spluttered. “I have never done any such thing in my life--the _slander--_ ”

“Also, Wei Wuxian was wearing a white under-robe at dinner.”

“Is that supposed to be significant?!” Dorian squawked, still outraged.

“It’s not _his_ color.”

Dorian’s brain stuttered to a stop.

“It’s the Chief Cultivator’s color,” Bull added helpfully, as if Dorian wasn’t already miles ahead of him. “It was his robe, I think.”

“They _share underwear?_ ” Dorian demanded in a whisper-scream.

“And a bed.”

Dorian put his head in his hands. “Elder brother Wei, what are you _doing_ ,” he moaned. 

“You should ask him that,” Bull said cheerfully. “I’d be interested to know the answer. As for the Chief Cultivator, I’m pretty sure he’s doing everything he possibly can, short of hanging a sign around your Elder Brother Wei’s neck, to say _This one’s mine, don’t fucking touch him, don’t even_ **_think_ ** _of touching him._ ”

Dorian raised his head and gave Bull a despairing look.

Bull shrugged. “It’s what I’d do. It’s what I _have_ done.”

“With _whom_ ?” Dorian stopped, closed his eyes again. “The Chargers. _Bull’s Chargers_ . You practically _did_ hang a sign around their necks.”

“When somebody’s yours, you protect them,” Bull said simply. “Even if it means breaking all the rules.”

Dorian sobered, remembering the Storm Coast, the cliff, the blowing rain stinging against their faces. The sound of Bull blowing the horn to call the Chargers back. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes, I quite agree.”

The moment lingered just a beat too long, and then Bull stretched, tucking his hands behind his head so his biceps did _the thing,_ leaning back against the headboard of the bed, and drawing up one knee just an inch so his leg rolled out and open, and he grinned at Dorian. “So, you gonna stay over there and keep looking all night or what?”

Awful. Bad man. Terrible. Wretched. Dorian pulled off his boots and straddled Bull, thrilling all the way up his spine when those big hands fell to his hips.

Ugh. This was the last time he’d be able to count on one hand how many times they’d done this. After this, he’d either have to stop, or else the next time he’d have to count on _two_ hands. Appalling. The worst. He could not believe himself.

*

The next day, Dorian oozed his way past the rooms where Lavellan was negotiating with these people--many of the walls were made of paper screens, which made it trivially easy to eavesdrop. 

It did actually seem to be going fairly well--Cole, being a spirit, spoke in the same way Dorian’s translation spell worked, and it seemed that whoever was listening to him was fairly receptive to the strange, lyrical, allusive speech patterns he used when he wasn’t being terribly, endearingly literal. “Fire, death, fear,” Cole was murmuring. “Red, burning, twisting, poison. They’re happy to see it burn.” 

Whoever was listening murmured words of sympathy and understanding.

Well, good. They seemed to be doing well enough on their own for now. The Inquisitor and Cole could handle that, and Bull could work on learning the language organically, and Dorian… frankly deserved a few days to himself!

He turned around and went straight back to Wei Wuxian, reading a book under a tree in one of the exquisitely tasteful courtyards. “Hello, younger brother. I’d have thought you’d be off doing diplomacy with the others.”

“I did my bit getting them here,” Dorian says. “They’re doing perfectly well without me. Can I interrupt you?” 

Wei Wuxian sighed heavily and laid the book down on his face. “I can’t look at you without being reminded of our great tragedy. I shall never drink again.”

“What a shame,” Dorian said. “It was going to be my treat tonight.” 

*

They went down into the little town at the base of the mountain, and Dorian spent far too much of his pocket money on yards of absolutely luscious silks, an exquisitely painted fan, a pair of jade bracelets, a dozen bottles of liquor, and dinner at the restaurant that Wei Wuxian claimed served the best food in the region. The dishes that arrived at their table were the colors of fire, spicy enough to make even _his_ eyes water, and then Wei Wuxian asked the waiter for chili oil and--

Dorian liked this place _so much._

It was nothing like home, and yet the basic fundamentals of what he loved about home were present here, just manifested in new ways: New shapes, new flavors, new colors and textures. Beautiful clothes, beautiful jewelry, delicious food, excellent company. It wasn’t home, but it was better than the uncultured wasteland of Ferelden. 

And, best of all, there was a kindred spirit in Wei Wuxian, who had a delightful sense of humor, a very appealing sort of self-deprecation, an amused disinterest in presenting himself as someone who should be taken seriously, and a _profound_ intelligence the like of which Dorian had only found a few times before in his life. They got to arguing about magic again over the meal, and Wei Wuxian quoted poetry and scholarly sources in one breath and then criticized them and pointed out all the flaws in their logic in the next. Dorian couldn’t remember the last time he enjoyed himself so much while sober and fully clothed.

Though sober was already working its way to tipsy, since Dorian had opened the first jar of wine and shared it out between the two of them. “Look,” he said, “I’m usually the sort to flirt and hint and bat my eyes until someone else takes the initiative, but I’m just going to ask. That soulmate of yours.”

“Eh?” said Wei Wuxian at his cup of wine. “Lan Zhan? What about him?”

“You’re soulmates, and you have a son. He’s clearly possessive of you. But you won’t do a thing about it.”

Wei Wuxian went pink in the cheeks and laughed raucously. “The things you say, younger brother! So direct! So forthright!” 

Okay, so maybe Bull had been right. Awful man.

“Yes, I quite agree, I disgust myself,” Dorian said. “But listen. He was angry when the Iron Bull flirted with you, and when he thought I was flirting with you. He’s jealous.”

Wei Wuxian cackled even louder--it sounded, to Dorian’s ear, a touch nervous. “Lan Zhan’s like that to everybody! He’s just a little overprotective because of that time I died.”

“A thought experiment, then. Supposing I asked to kiss you.”

Wei Wuxian, in the midst of taking a sip of wine, choked and coughed, pounding his chest.

“I’m not asking,” Dorian said, holding up one hand. “But suppose. For the sake of science. Do you think your soulmate would be happy about you kissing other people?”

“Why are we always talking about me?” Wei Wuxian said lightly, even as he set his cup down heavily. “Okay. Ah, I’m going to have to meddle after all. Okay. Supposing _I_ asked to kiss _you_.”

“If you’re about to inquire after Bull again, he’s not the jealous sort.”

“Younger brother Pavus, don’t do this to me. Listen. Someone should tell you -- his face goes all soft when he looks at you. He likes you.”

“Of course he likes me, we’re colleagues.”

“You were in his room for a long time last night. You were laughing.”

“You followed us?” 

“Lan Zhan did. _I_ told him he was being a big silly.”

Dorian studied him. “Why did he follow us?” 

“I told him you weren’t involved like that, and he was highly skeptical, so he went to see for himself. He thinks I’ve got it all wrong, of course.” Wei Wuxian paused to pout. “I tried to explain to him what you told me, but… He thinks you really are together, but that it’s secret. At least he’s calmed down a lot now.”

“Calmed down? Whatever for? Could it be because he _is_ the jealous type?” Dorian snorted. “I can’t say I usually care to be eavesdropped on, but if we managed to give him some ideas, then I’ll expect a thank-you note--”

“Ideas?” 

“Oh, didn’t he tell you?” Dorian said lightly. “I got fabulously laid last night. Feel free to envy me.”

Wei Wuxian’s cheeks went pink again, but he tapped a finger against his lips thoughtfully. “That would explain why he was so cagey with the details. He just said that it sounded like there was a great deal of _sincere affection_ between you two.”

Dorian was born and bred not just in Tevinter, but in one of the most hostile and precarious political situations in Tevinter, with a pair of bloodthirsty, ruthless politicians for parents. He refused to flinch or blush. “Bull had a few things to mention as well. Were you wearing Lan Wangji’s under-robe at the banquet last night?” 

“What of it? We are very close, what are a few articles of clothing shared between best friends? Were you walking arm-in-arm on the way back to Bull’s room?” 

“I was feeling up his biceps, and I assure you it was purely sexual. Do you share a bed with yours?” 

“Of course, there’s only one bed in the Jingshi, where else are we supposed to sleep?”

“Oh, I don’t know, perhaps if it were regular to share a house, someone might have brought up the idea of buying a second bed. Oh--unless nobody actually wants a second bed in your house?” 

“Does Iron Bull always go around without a shirt, or is he just showing off to get your attention?” 

“Can’t both be true?” Dorian said, airy. “Who wouldn’t want to show off for me, after all? But Bull shows off for anyone who gives him a second glance.”

“Supposing I gave him a second glance, then,” Wei Wuxian said. “Would he show off for me?” 

“Instantly. It’s a compulsion.” But ah, he’d made a fatal error. He’d been using his mother’s lexicon of composure, and he’d forgotten that Wei Wuxian knew someone with the same lexicon. 

Wei Wuxian sat up, eyes sharp. “ _You’re_ a bit the jealous sort.” 

Dorian laughed aloud, scrambling to regain ground. “Don’t be foolish, how could I be jealous? I have no claim on Bull, and neither does he have any claim on me. And you? If your soulmate ever slept with someone else--”

“He wouldn’t,” Wei Wuxian said instantly, with utmost confidence.

“Explain to me how you know that.”

Wei Wuxian shut his mouth, his eyes narrowed.

Détente. 

Dorian poured them both another cup of wine, and sipped slowly from his, gazing at Wei Wuxian over the rim. The air between them nearly crackled, and Dorian felt the edge of a cliff under his feet--another push in the wrong direction, and they’d be in a fight for real, and then they could both say goodbye to the idea of being friends anymore.

*

“How’d it go?” Bull said that evening when Dorian skulked into his rooms. Bull was sitting at the low table--which really did look childishly low compared to Bull’s bulk--and he had paper, brushes, ink. A stack of filled sheets beside him, covered in careful lines of characters, one per column, repeated again and again all the way down the page like raindrops running down a windowpane.

“Did you know that the Chief Cultivator followed us back here the other night?” Dorian demanded, picking up one of the sheets and examining it. He had no eye for the written language, no basis for comparison, but it looked… very nice. Neat and tidy. Beautiful, elegant. Very unBull-like. Ugh. Dorian was probably going to have to jerk off after this, and he was _not_ going to do it thinking about Bull’s exquisite brushwork.

“I did. There’s been someone following me around the whole time I’ve been here. I didn’t think much of it. They’re delighted with Cole, can’t get enough of him, but me? They don’t quite know what to make of me.” Bull had an extraordinarily delicate grip of the writing brush, and he leaned over the page to continue the column he was working on. 

“I sympathize.” 

“Thanks.”

“With them. I sympathize with _them._ ”

“Aw, give yourself more credit,” Bull said, shooting him a sly look out of the corner of his eye. “You’ve already had some great ideas about what you could make of me.”

Dorian glared at him. “Back to the topic at hand. I tried to be direct with him about his _soulmate_.”

“Ah. Didn’t go well.”

“He was very resistant.”

“What an unexpected surprise.” Bull started a new column with a different character. Dorian was momentarily distracted by the delicate brushstrokes and suppressed a shiver.

“He, ah… Attempted to change the subject. Turn it back on me.”

“Ah,” said Bull meaningfully. “He didn’t want to talk about holding hands with the boy he likes, so he retaliated and tried to make you talk about holding hands with me.”

“I am literally _begging_ you not to be so disgusting.”

“That was most of it, though, eh?” 

“From one perspective, I suppose,” Dorian said impatiently. 

“Ah well. They’ll probably figure it out eventually.”

Dorian shifted. He watched Bull write a whole two columns of characters before he spoke again. “Is that it, then? Is that how spy things work for you? You just prod around, notice things about people, and… that’s it?” 

“Pretty much. I don’t have anyone to make reports to these days, but old habits die hard. And you never know when some little thing’s gonna be useful down the line.” Another long silence. “You’re uncomfortable,” Bull rumbled.

“I’m not.”

“You made a friend.”

“It hasn’t even been a week.”

“Do you know what you see in him?”

Dorian scoffed. “You ask like _you_ know what I _should_ be seeing in him.”

“Eh, just guesses.”

“Are they as unimpressive as your guesses were last night?” 

“You have a lot in common. You both like mucking about doing creepy shit with demons, you’re both big old nerds--”

“I am one of the leading scholars in _all of Thedas_ on certain kinds of magic,” Dorian snapped.

“You both get all cute and floppy when you’re drunk. You both consider getting drunk to be one of the highest forms of recreation.” Bull paused and gazed speculatively at the opposite wall. “Probably use it the same for dulling the edges of a bad day.”

“So do you.”

“I drink _socially_ , Dorian, not _recreationally_. You both like men, of course. And… hm.” 

“What,” Dorian demanded.

“Don’t think I should say the last bit.” 

“Whyever not?”

“You might get mad and storm out.”

“I’m not a child.”

“Suit yourself. I don’t think either of you really knows why people might value you. You’ve both wrapped your heads around the idea that someone _might_ , but I bet neither of you could pin down _why_ . That’s why he can’t put himself out there to make progress with his soulmate. That’s why you’re... the way you are. You’re both afraid, real deep down, and you do a good job masking it with smiles and jokes and--whatchamacallit. Panache. _Flair_.”

Dorian found that his back had gone straight as a bar of steel. A silence fell for the space of three breaths. He drew a slow breath and said through his teeth, “That’s rather far out of bounds, The Iron Bull.”

“Not trying to start a fight,” Bull said gently, glancing up from his writing. “Not trying to poke you in your tender parts. Not saying there’s anything wrong with being that way.”

“Of course there isn’t,” Dorian said, as coldly haughty as his mother had ever been. “I would never allow myself to be less than exceptional.”

“I know,” Bull said, and the worst part was that it wasn’t flirting, it was just--stating facts. “And you succeed at that.”

“Of course I do. Do you think I’m incapable of recognizing my own accomplishments?”

Bull tipped his head from side to side. “No,” he said decidedly after a moment. “But I think you don’t always know that even with setting those accomplishments aside, you’re still a great guy.”

He’d already said he wasn’t childish enough to storm out of the room, so now he had to sit here and take this. His gut clenched. He wanted to laugh it off. He wanted to run. He tossed his hair a little. “Of course I know that,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I know? I could list off a dozen reasons why people value me. Is this really the best that the Ben-Hassrath spies have to offer?” 

“If I ask you, _Hey, Dorian, why do we like being around you?_ then you’ll scoff and tell me something like _Well, where would you all be without my creepy demon magic in battle, I am after all the best scholar in Thedas in my field, and I am sacrificing myself selflessly by suffering away in that dusty library every day,_ and then you’ll sigh about how someone has to do it, because Solas only cares about rummaging through ancient elf stuff and at least _your_ research is useful, and once you’re done talking about all that, then you’ll start reaching for things like… your fashion sense compensating for everybody else’s, or how good your profile is, and then you’ll slip up and say something like _And then of course there’s my absolutely_ _charming personality_. But that? That’s sarcastic. The rest would be facts, but there’s the chink in your armor.” There was a beat of silence. “You work real hard to charm people, but you don’t think any of that charm’s innate. Because nobody would be charmed by Dorian Pavus unless he was forcing ’em, right?”

Dorian smiled tightly. “That has been the case in my experience, yes.”

“You think the Inquisitor only brings you along on all our outings because you’re his favorite mage and a fuckin’ powerhouse, not because he likes your stories about Tevinter or how you make him laugh. You think that Cole only likes you because he’s a gullible kid, not because you’re kind and honest with him when he asks you questions about the stuff that hurts most.”

“And you?” Dorian gritted out. “Pray tell, why do I think _you_ like me?” 

Bull put his brush down. “Getting a lot of layers in this I-think-that-you-think-that-I-think thing, eh? You’re expecting me to say _You think I only like you for the sex_ , so that when I do, you can feel like you’ve won a point off me when you say that I’m wrong, and then you’ll claim that you know I also like you for having my back in a fight and being able to hold your liquor.”

“And the sex too, of course,” Dorian said lightly, as if it didn’t matter, as if they were simply joking now. “And the way I let you walk behind me because I know your opinions on which parts of me vastly improve the scenery.”

Bull didn’t miss a beat. “Sure. And because of the way you know when to pester me out of a foul mood and when to back off. And because of the way that, even at the end of a long night when we’re all ground down and exhausted and freezing cold and hungry and covered in gore--even then, in the worst, most miserable circumstances, you keep on _giving a shit_ about people.” 

Silence. Dorian didn’t know what to say. He looked away, but he could still feel Bull’s gaze heavy on him.

“I like you, Dorian, because you keep me centered,” Bull said, his voice very quiet, terrifyingly quiet. “I like you because, even knowing that you could bust out in demons at any second, I feel safe when you’re around.”

Dorian scoffed to cover his discomfort. “Please. Meaningless flattery--”

“It isn’t.”

Another scoff. “There is _nothing_ I could keep you safe from that you couldn’t adequately manage yourself--”

“No. Other way around. Not about being safe from all the shit we face. It’s about being safe because if I ever lost myself and went bad, you're the only person in Thedas who’d be able to take me the fuck down before I hurt anyone.” 

Dorian’s breath left him in a sharp exhale.

“And,” Bull continued, solemn, inexorable as the tide, “I like you because I know that _you would do it_ . Not just that you _could_ \--that you _would_. That’s what feels safe, kadan. Means that as long as you’re in the room, I can relax a little.”

“I didn’t come here for this,” Dorian said through his teeth, staring down at the table.

Bull said, neutrally, “I get that.”

And still Dorian could not storm out. “You might level the playing field,” he said.

“Yeah? How?”

“Are you capable of being as vicious with assessments of yourself as you are of those of others?”

“I can if you want me to, kadan,” Bull said, voice still even. There, that word again. He’d said it a moment ago too. Dorian flashed briefly through his extremely limited knowledge of Qunlat and, turning up nothing, found himself even more annoyed. He should have kept the translation spell up.

“Why have you been staring at that wall of rules so much?” Dorian asked sharply, before he could stop himself. “Start with that.”

There were two Bulls, and Dorian knew it--there was the Bull that would crack a raunchy joke and flirt with anything that stayed still long enough for him to catch it, and some things that didn’t, like dragons. And there was the Bull who was calm, poised in readiness for action at all times, always watching, assessing, collating information, seeing patterns and drawing conclusions. The latter was the one who answered: “It reminds me of home,” Bull said, with that flat voice again, the one that sounded like he was delivering a report to a field commander. No trace of the sort of wistful sentiment that had followed Dorian all around the Caiyi market earlier that day. Just… facts, as if he were analyzing the behavior of some stranger. “You send a Tal-Vashoth up a mountain path, you say _Here’s a wall of three thousand rules that govern every aspect of life and behavior_ , you show him a _structure…”_ Bull paused. “It reminds me of home. The best parts of home, the parts that felt--safe.”

“Safe,” Dorian echoed.

“I don’t get to feel safe too often these days. Can’t exactly tie our wrists together so you gotta go everywhere with me, can I?”

Dorian opened his mouth, a barb ready on his tongue, something about dying from the stench within a week. But the mood was strange enough that he didn’t feel quite himself, and perhaps that was the reason he was able to pause without speaking, close his mouth, swallow the barb down. 

“The thing that makes a Tal-Vashoth go crazy is… selfhood. Identity shit. Who are you if there aren’t any rules? Who are you if there’s no one to tell you who you are, or what the right thing to do is? How do you know where to go, or what to say, if nobody’s given you a purpose? A _function?”_ The corner of his scarred mouth quirked. “So you send Tal-Vashoth to walk up a mountain, and at the top of the mountain there’s a bunch of people who think they’ve got it figured out. They’ve figured out purpose, they’ve got it locked down. They’ve figured out exactly how to be, and they’ve written all the rules out nicely on a big stone wall so anybody could come and look at it and see how it works.” Bull wasn’t the type to fidget. In bed, in the aftermath of sex, he was often terribly still, even when he was still talking and joking. Dorian had always wondered what he was holding back. He wondered again now. “So Tal-Vashoth, coming up the mountain, sees these rules and thinks to himself, _Oh, only three thousand?_ ” 

Dorian snorted. Bull’s eye flicked to him briefly, and the corner of his mouth quirked again.

“Tal-Vashoth thinks, _This is a bit like home._ He thinks, _Home thought that they had it all figured out too_ \--that’s the biggest similarity, that certainty of righteousness. But Tal-Vashoth was once Ben-Hassrath, was once _Hissrad_ , and part of him still is, so he sits down to look for the differences. Divergences in the pattern, stones in the river. Maybe these people missed something. Maybe home missed something.”

“All the rules in the world can’t delineate what _the right thing_ is always going to be,” Dorian found himself saying quietly. All the anger had drained out of him. “Tal-Vashoth knows that better than anyone, I think. ‘When somebody’s yours, you protect them, even if it means breaking all the rules’, wasn’t it? That’s the only rule that matters. But it’s still not perfect, is it? If two of the people who are yours need protection, who do you choose? What if they need protecting from each other? Even with ten thousand rules, you couldn’t figure a perfect solution for every situation.”

“Nope,” Bull said. “You’re always gonna miss something.”

*

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said into the dark. One minute past nine, and the lights were out and he was lying next to Lan Zhan in bed, the covers tucked up under his chin and Lan Zhan’s soft warmth radiating from a few inches away.

“Hm?” 

He knew exactly what he meant to say, it burned on his tongue like an ember, but... How could he say it? The pause stretched out a beat too long, and then he felt and heard the shift of the pillow as Lan Zhan turned his head towards him. 

“Wei Ying?”

“Hm?” Wei Wuxian said.

“You called my name.”

“Haha. Yeah. I call your name all the time. Maybe I just like calling you. Lan Zhan!”

“Wei Ying.” Soft, amused, affectionate.

Wei Wuxian wriggled onto his side to face him. “Hey,” he said, compulsively. “Hey, do you think we know everything about each other?”

The barest pause. The starlight from the window was just enough that he could see the white of the sheets and Lan Zhan’s nightclothes, and the stark black river of his hair. “Everything important.”

“Aren’t unimportant things also important?”

“Hm.” Dubious, but open. Willing to be convinced, to hear Wei Wuxian’s argument.

So he presented said argument: “Isn’t it important to you to know that I like spicy food and Emperor’s Smile, and that I’m scared of dogs?” 

“Yes,” Lan Zhan said, firm and decisive.

“But spicy food and Emperor’s Smile and dogs are unimportant, right?”

“Hm.” Acquiescence. Allowing the point.

“Right! When you have a zhiji, even the unimportant things are important to know, yeah?”

“Agreed.”

“Do you think we know all the unimportant things about each other?” 

Another small silence, but it had the air of consideration, careful thought. “I hope I do not.”

“Eh?”

“If I knew everything about Wei Ying, I would have nothing new to discover. Such discoveries are… joyful. Therefore, I hope it never happens that I run out of them.”

Wei Wuxian made a garbled sound and hid his face in the pillow. “Lan Zhan, you can’t go around being that cute! It’s illegal! It’s against the precepts! Who gave you permission!” The softest huff of breath, a laugh, and Wei Wuxian’s fingertips itched to reach out and touch the smile that would be there, soft across Lan Zhan’s mouth. It suddenly felt excessively warm under the covers. “You can ask me,” he said, reckless. “Anything. Anything, always, anything you want to know. Anything. Unimportant or important.”

Lan Zhan hummed in agreement again. “Wei Ying as well,” he said. His voice was so soft, as if whispering in bed was something that might get them into trouble.

“Yeah? I can?” 

“Mn.”

Wei Wuxian was trembling a little, every muscle tense, but not unpleasantly so. It was--dangerous, but exciting danger. “Have you--”

A beat. “Hm?” 

He couldn’t stand the tension--he summoned up a laugh to chase it off. “Okay, okay, just unimportant things! Do you have a favorite bunny?” 

“Yes,” Lan Zhan said after the barest moment.

“What!” Wei Wuxian cried, half sitting up. “Hanguang-jun plays favorites? This can’t be true!”

“She knows me,” Lan Zhan said, sounding a little abashed. “She is always the first to come to me when I visit.”

Wei Wuxian wheezed for breath. “Oh no. Oh no, what’s her name?”

Another split-second pause. “I call her Little Feet.” Wei Wuxian wheezed again wordlessly, and Lan Zhan offered, “She has very little feet.”

“I’m dying,” Wei Wuxian said, strangled. “I’m dead now.”

Lan Zhan snorted derisively and turned properly on his side to face Wei Wuxian. “She may be a spiritual bunny,” he said very solemnly. “She is intelligent and unafraid of people. She once showed me her babies.”

Wei Wuxian screeched softly into the air between them.

“There were five of them. This big,” and Lan Zhan patted for Wei Wuxian’s hand in the dark and traced an oval on his palm, the size of an impossibly small baby bunny.

“How,” Wei Wuxian managed, barely. “How did she show you? Did she bite the hem of your robe and tug you along?” 

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said reproachfully. “No. She is polite as well as intelligent. She hopped away and looked back and waited for me to follow.”

“And she took you to her nest? Bunnies don’t do that.”

“Mn. Therefore, she must be a spiritual bunny.”

“What did you do? When you saw the babies?” 

“I admired them respectfully. I wished them good fortune and longevity. I complimented Little Feet on her great accomplishment, and then I gathered grasses and healthy herbs to lay by the nest so she would not have to go far from them for food.”

“I fucking _can’t cope with this_ ,” Wei Wuxian said. He noticed vaguely that their hands were still touching, loosely entwined on the bed between them, but that happened sometimes. Lan Zhan didn’t seem to think it was notable, so maybe that was just something that zhiji did together, sleeping in one bed and holding hands and so forth. A little of that tension he’d chased away came back--what else might zhiji do? Dorian Pavus had some pointed ideas, certainly. 

That was really what Wei Wuxian wanted to ask, wasn’t it. He kept circling and circling around it, glancing at the thought out of the corner of his eye, sneaking up on it slowly.

He opened his mouth and--nope, too chicken, couldn’t do it. “Okay, your turn, ask me something.”

“Is Wei Ying happy here?”

He blinked. “Here? Here in the Cloud Recesses, you mean? Or here, lying in the dark and whispering secrets with you?” 

“Either.” Was that a note of hesitance he detected? That wouldn’t do at all.

“I’m happy anywhere Lan Zhan is,” he said confidently, grinning into the dark and squeezing Lan Zhan’s hand. “That’s my only requirement for liking a place. Does it have Lan Zhan in it? Then it’s the best. No complaints.”

“Hm.” Satisfied, pleased.

“You cheated, though, you’re only supposed to ask me unimportant stuff.”

“It is all important to me.”

“But--but ask me stuff like what my favorite season is.”

“Autumn,” Lan Zhan answered. Did he sound a little smug? Rude.

“Or my favorite weather.”

“Hot sunshine on the river in Yunmeng.”

Wei Wuxian huffed.

“It is Wei Ying’s turn,” Lan Zhan said placidly. 

Before he could think better of it, Wei Wuxian blurted, “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

He heard Lan Zhan’s breath catch. The moment drew out, almost to the breaking point. “Only--in a familial way. My mother, when I was very small. A-Yuan, when he was very small.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.” A pause. “Do you not kiss the bunnies? _Lan_ _Zhan._ Surely Little Feet deserves kisses more than anyone else in the _world_.”

“I would never insult her dignity like that,” Lan Zhan said. And then, horribly, “Has Wei Ying?” 

“What? Uh. Kissed anybody, you mean?” His voice was a little high-pitched. He cleared his throat. “Hah, uh. Well. Only in a familial way, as you say. Jiang Cheng, shijie. A-Yuan. Granny Wen, one time, right on the cheek, and then she threatened to smack me with her shoe. A girl in Yunmeng once, on a dare. We were eight.”

“That is not what I meant either.”

Silence. Wei Wuxian wet his lips. “Have you ever… wanted to?”

“Yes.” No hesitation there, not an instant of it. Wei Wuxian’s heart jerked hard in his chest, almost painful. “And you?”

“Well. Sometimes. Yeah.” He laughed nervously. “Did you--when you were a teenager, did you ever have that thing where, y’know, everywhere you looked there was someone just _stupidly_ pretty and you couldn’t stop thinking about it? Like, just _everyone_ , constantly, all the time?”

“Not everyone.” Another pause. “There were. Some. That I noticed.”

Wei Wuxian couldn’t help himself. He wriggled a little. “Anyone I know?”

Lan Zhan made a faintly disapproving noise.

“Come on! Just one! Who was the first one you ever… _noticed_? When was it? Was it one of our classmates that summer I was here?” 

“No. Before that. A merchant, down in Caiyi during a festival.” Another of those delicate pauses. “He had a nice smile. I noticed.”

Something in Wei Wuxian’s chest _thrummed_ at the pronoun. He’d never been quite sure, but--well, there it was. _He_. Good, then. That was good. “What was he selling?” 

“I did not notice that. I did not care. I walked away quickly.”

He almost cackled--he could just picture Lan Zhan’s little face, the way he’d go red in the ears and angry in the face and turn away sharply, just like he’d always done to Wei Wuxian when he was trying to make friends. “Too cute! Too cute, Lan Zhan! Who else?” He nudged his foot against Lan Zhan’s calf under the blankets, encouraging. “Come on, there were so many hot people in our set when we were young. Who’d you notice? Is it embarrassing? Oh no, was it Jin Zixuan?” A tiny scoff. Wei Wuxian grins into the dark. “Hm, was it Nie Mingjue? Those shoulders, am I right?” 

“No,” Lan Zhan said, absolutely dripping with haughtiness. “Ridiculous.”

“Why is it ridiculous? Everybody appreciates a good set of shoulders.”

“I had a zhiji,” came the supremely prim reply. “I was unconcerned with noticing then.”

Wei Wuxian bit his lip and suppressed the urge to squirm. “Oh? Haha, I guess I was such a troublemaker that it took up all your attention, huh? Too busy running around trying to save me from myself?”

“Mn,” said Lan Zhan, which Wei Wuxian guessed to mean _something like that._

An echo of Dorian Pavus’s voice from that afternoon: _A thought experiment, then. Supposing I asked to kiss you._ “What if,” Wei Wuxian said, then bit his tongue on the rest. 

_What if I asked to kiss you? What if someone else asked to kiss me, just as a joke, what would you do?_ He wanted to screech into the sheets again at the very thought of asking that aloud. 

“What would you do if someone came along and--and flirted with you?”

The tone of the silence became distinctly suspicious. “A stranger?”

“Or whoever, you know, maybe a friend.”

“A friend would know I have a zhiji,” Lan Zhan said, his voice like a solid granite wall. Immovable. Thrilling. “Why do you ask?”

“Haha, no reason.”

The suspicious silence became more pointed.

“Just a hypothetical,” Wei Wuxian said. “Just. You know. Wondering.” 

“Wondering.”

“Yeah. Wondering what you’d do, or--or what your face would look like.”

“It would look like my face.”

“Yeah, but--okay, what about that cute merchant from way back? What if you ran into him again and he still had a nice smile? What would you think?”

“I would think, ‘Not as nice as Wei Ying’s.’” Wei Wuxian only had a moment to feel a thrill course through him about that, and then Lan Zhan said flatly, “Stop.”

“Huh? Stop what?”

“Asking about other people.”

Wei Wuxian heaved a sigh. “Right, you have a zhiji, so you never look at anybody else anymore, or think about whether they’re cute, or want to kiss them.”

“Correct.”

And yet Lan Zhan had said _yes_ so unhesitatingly when Wei Wuxian asked whether he had ever wanted to kiss someone, so… what did that mean? There was a large and obvious answer that settled in his brain like a huge stone pillar in the middle of the room, but he couldn’t bring himself to think the words even to himself, and with an ardent will borne of years--decades--of practice, he was fully prepared to completely ignore the very existence of the pillar.

Three days previously, he would have succeeded. Three days previously, he would not have had any troublesome other thoughts in his head to contradict his deliberate ignoring of the situation, or if he did, they wouldn’t have had any reason to intersect with thoughts of his zhiji.

Like… kissing. It was against the rules to think about kissing and Lan Zhan in the same thought, and so he simply Did Not.

And then Dorian Pavus had had to come along, with his own set of ridiculous problems, and say things about--about seduction, and about jealousy, and... 

And now Wei Wuxian couldn’t help but be aware of that stone-pillar thought even when he had his mental back turned towards it, even when he was ignoring as firmly as possible the thought, _Wait, does Lan Zhan want to kiss me?_

(It’s just that Lan Zhan said yes, he wanted to kiss someone, but no, he hadn’t even looked at anyone else since he had a zhiji, except everybody knew (right???) that a zhiji wasn’t really for kissing--everybody knew that, probably there were precepts about it. Unspoken ones, at the very least. Having a zhiji or a cultivation partner was more about...well, whatever it was about, it wasn’t sex--he was just being shameless again, pushing against all the taboos of polite society because that was what Wei Wuxian did. Take Xiao Xingchen and Song Lan, for example--it was ridiculous to think that they’d been having sex, wasn’t it--

Oh god, hot. Wait, no--wrong, wrong, better not think about that either--)

“Wei Ying?”

He jumped, startled out of his thoughts. “Huh? What? Hi, that’s me, I’m Wei Ying.”

“You were quiet.”

“Me? Quiet? Haha, I was just trying to think of something else to ask you about--”

“It was my turn.”

His heart was thundering in his chest. He could feel it all the way into his throat. “Oh.”

Lan Zhan was still holding his hand, still facing towards him. “What would Wei Ying do, if a stranger flirted?” 

He let out all his breath in a rush. “Well, I have a zhiji, so.” 

“Hm.” The strange tension eased minutely, back to a level that could, barely, be considered relaxed.

“Haha,” Wei Wuxian said, feeling a little weak with relief. “Wasn’t this fun? It’s fun to stay up late and talk in the dark like this, isn’t it? About all sorts of--of random things that might never come up in normal conversation, just sort of casually chatting for fun. Right? You said. You said you liked learning things about me.”

“I did,” Lan Zhan said. His thumb rubbed over Wei Wuxian’s knuckles. “Lately, Wei Ying seems…”

“Eh? Huh?”

“Until recently, Wei Ying has not seemed concerned with… physical intimacy.”

Oh good, and now Wei Wuxian was having hot and cold flashes. He was starting to sweat a little, shaky and clammy like he was coming down with a cold, but at the same time supremely aware of every single inch of space between his body and Lan Zhan’s. “Ahaha. Haha. Can’t I ask whatever questions I want? Wasn’t that the game?”

“Yes.” Another one of those horrible pauses, and this one bore the distinct tone of _But…_ “I wonder only if the timing is a coincidence.”

“What, you mean because of our guests?” Wei Wuxian laughed aloud. “Lan Zhan ah, Lan Zhan, are you the one with the bad memory now? Don’t you remember that book I showed you in the library when we were young?”

“Yes,” Lan Zhan said, utterly flat.

“So you don’t have to worry! Back then, I definitely would have asked about who you wanted to kiss if you hadn’t been so scary! You would have said ‘Shameless!’ and chased me out of the Cloud Recesses. I couldn’t risk it! How would I have been able to look at my favorite person’s face if he’d run me off? Even I know there’s limits to how far you can poke at a person.” He laughed again. “I’m curious about all sorts of things, Lan Zhan. I was curious then, and I’m curious today, and I’ll probably be curious next week too! So it’s not just my new didi putting ideas in my head and--and corrupting my innocence or anything!”

“I did not say it was.”

“Oh, don’t give me that, you _thought_ it.” 

A soft, derisive snort. A moment passed, and then another, Lan Zhan’s fingers moving soft over his own, tracing the lines and knobs of his hand. Just when Wei Wuxian thought the topic had drifted away, Lan Zhan said, in tones of dreadful sincerity, “There is no question that would make me chase Wei Ying away now.”

“Lan Zhan!” he wailed. “You can’t say that! You’re going to give me ideas about what sort of things I can get away with!”

“Anything,” Lan Zhan said, his voice rich and low and soft. “Wei Ying can ask, or want, or do anything he likes.”

Wei Wuxian forced himself to laugh again, though it came out a little thin and squeaky this time. “You’ll regret saying that.”

“I won’t.”

“You will! You absolutely will!” 

“I _won’t._ ” There was that granite-wall voice again, as inflexible as the bones of the earth. It took Wei Wuxian’s breath away. “Whatever Wei Ying wants, I also want.”

Wei Wuxian was overcome with that damned image again, the one Dorian Pavus had put in his head: presenting himself naked and tied up in a red ribbon in Lan Zhan’s bed--in this very bed they were in now--but now he thought of Lan Zhan’s eyes eyes on him, his long porcelain-white fingers pulling the ribbon loose because he wouldn’t be happy unless every last inch of Wei Wuxian’s skin was bared to him--

Wei Wuxian pulled his hand away and sat up. “Right now I think Wei Ying wants to go for a little walk,” he said quickly. “Because it’s long past time for all little Lans to be dreaming, and you know how cranky you get when you don’t get enough sleep, er-gege, so--” He fumbled his way out of the covers, turning around to tuck them snugly around Lan Zhan’s shoulders so he couldn’t move. “There! Now you can be cozy and go to sleep, and I won’t be here to bother you.” 

“Wei Ying.” Reproachful, dissenting. 

“Now, none of that, don’t be a fussy young master, Lan-er-gege, don’t argue with me! Sleep! I’ll see you tomorrow, okay!”

He fled.

He scuttled halfway across the Cloud Recesses before he knew where he was going--when he came to the guest quarters, he was relieved to see Dorian Pavus, who also appeared to be scuttling away from his quarters, though he was doing so with rather more dignity than Wei Wuxian usually bothered to use. “Didi!” Wei Wuxian hissed. 

Dorian Pavus stopped in his tracks, already making the hand-signs to invoke the translation spell, and said, “Oh thank the fucking Maker. Hello, Wei-gege.”

Wei Wuxian grabbed his arm. “Let’s go do some science or something, right now.”

Dorian grabbed his arm back. “I could not possibly agree more strongly.”  
  


***

Doing science sober was nowhere near as fun as doing science drunk, but it was significantly more organized. Wei Wuxian took him out of the Cloud Recesses in the opposite direction from the previous nighttime expedition, going further up the mountain to a little meadow. They laid out paper and writing things on the ground to work, lit by Dorian’s witchlight in the branches of the tree above them. 

By midnight, he had just about gotten his head around Wei Wuxian’s descriptions of the difference between “resentful” energy and “spiritual” energy. At three in the morning, Dorian was in the midst of describing the sensation of walking in the Fade in exhaustive detail when Wei Wuxian suddenly got a funny expression on his face and said, “Oh, shit, I think I know what you’re talking about, I think I’ve been--you said you _fell_ into it, once? And it’s strange and spooky and full of things that whisper to you--”

“I mean, you can’t really fall into it unless you have an Inquisitor like ours, with Rift magic to open a door, but there are places in the world where the veil between this world and the other is… thin, where the Fade could seep through and--”

“Yes,” said Wei Wuxian. “Yes, yes, yes, yes yes yes, tell me _everything_ you know about this, and then tomorrow if nobody needs us, maybe we fly over to Yiling and I’ll show you something cool--wait, dammit, you can’t fly by sword--”

“I beg your pardon, _fly?_ By _sword?_ ”

So Wei Wuxian told him about swords, and went on a long tangent about the sword he carried in his previous life (at the name, “Whatever”, Dorian had to sharply prod the translation spell again to make sure it was still working) and attempted to explain to Dorian how to fly.

“Elder Brother Wei, are you fucking with me?” Dorian asked, suspicious.

“I’m not fucking with you, every cultivator learns this by age ten!” 

“Then go get a sword and show me first.”

“I can’t. For reasons. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Why not? This feels like a prank.”

“It’s not a prank! Look, you remember what I said about spiritual energy? There’s a golden core that sits right here,” Wei Wuxian patted his lower stomach, just under his navel, “and if you don’t have a golden core, then you can’t channel spiritual energy and then you can’t fly by sword.”

“So why can’t you do it? Do you not have a golden core?” 

Wei Wuxian’s face did a strange thing. “Short version: Nope! Not anymore! That’s why I use resentful energy and do the necromancy, you see.”

“Hm,” said Dorian, disapprovingly. “I do the necromancy because it’s interesting and fun and it makes people respectfully afraid of me.”

“Well, it’s a little bit evil, don’t you think? But in a sexy way.”

“Sure, in a sexy way,” Dorian said, because he simply did not give a shit. “Question: So you can raise the dead, but you can’t levitate a sword?”

“That’s resentful energy, younger brother, I told you already, it’s different--”

“Hm,” said Dorian, noncommittal. “Explain to me about this golden core thing.”

Wei Wuxian did, in exhaustive detail, using several pieces of poetics or technical jargon that strained the translation spell, and at the end he put his hands on his hips and grinned and said, “Pretty simple, right? What do you call it?” 

“We don’t call it _anything_ , we don’t even have a word for it. It’s just… the bit of you that makes you a mage. People start doing spells and speaking to spirits and demons in their dreams when they’re very young, and--” 

Wei Wuxian was nodding again. “Right, that’s when people start cultivating, if they’re going to become cultivators!”

“But if you can still access the Fade and you can still use resentful energy--”

Wei Wuxian thrust his wrist into Dorian’s face for some reason. “Nope!” he said cheerfully. “Here, take a look for yourself!”

Dorian studied his wrist, perplexed. “I beg your pardon? It’s your wrist.”

Wei Wuxian rolled his eyes, grabbed Dorian’s hand, and made him put two fingers on Wei Wuxian’s pulse point. “Like this. Now try to read my meridians.” 

“I don’t have a word for that either. What's a meridian? What are you asking me to do?”

Wei Wuxian gave him an astonished look. “Oh. Oh, well, alright, you just--uh. Hm. Do you ever close your eyes and sort of stretch out your energy and feel the surfaces and things in the room around you?”

“Oh--oh! Oh, that! That, but with your--veins?”

“Meridians.”

“Yes, alright, wait a second--” He was warier of doing it to a person than he generally was when doing it to sense out a room, but after a moment to gather his focus, he sent a little ping of magic into Wei Wuxian’s meridians and listened intently for how it bounced back--it was a little like echolocation. “Hm.”

“You should be able to feel that I’ve got an odd hollow spot, do you?”

“Huh. Yes. How strange. What in the world have you done to your magic, elder brother?”

Dorian opened his eyes just in time to see Wei Wuxian nod once, businesslike. “It’s a long story and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough.” He sent another little ping of magic at it. “Have you tried to do anything with it?”

Wei Wuxian waved his free hand vaguely. “I’ve done some research, but the general consensus in all the literature is that there’s not a lot that you _can_ do. Once you lose it, it’s gone.”

“Hm.”

“What?”

“Well, I will preface this by saying that I really do have nothing but respect and genuine admiration for the state of magical scholarship in this part of the world, but… on the other hand, I also have something of a fundamental contempt for scholars who blithely conclude that something is simply impossible, that a thing _can’t be done._ It’s something of an innate character flaw on my part, I’m afraid.”

“Some things really are impossible,” Wei Wuxian said quietly.

“My old master, who I spent my apprenticeship with--we invented a nice bit of magic that once sucked me and the Inquisitor about five years into the future. Spent a harrowing afternoon there. Can’t recommend it, but we came back in one piece. _You_ came back from the dead--not just a reanimated corpse, but _really_ back, with bodily needs like eating and drinking and sleep. Those ought to be impossible too, oughtn’t they?” He dropped Wei Wuxian’s wrist and shrugged. “If it can’t be done, then it can’t be done. But if you don’t want to try to do it, that’s a different matter. I would be very selfishly interested in the opportunity to learn more, should you wish for assistance--sometimes even in the pursuit of impossible knowledge, you come away with other things of value. That said, I hardly see why it would be _necessary_ \--you seem to be getting on quite well enough with only your resentful energy. Do you particularly miss flying by sword? Are there any other powers you no longer have access to?” 

Wei Wuxian tipped his head from side to side. Slowly, he said, “As you say, I’m getting on very well with what I have now, resentful energy and talismans, but…” His mouth thinned. “The issue of longevity will start coming up sooner or later.”

“Longevity?”

“Immortality. With a powerful enough golden core, aging slows down enough to be almost imperceptible. You stop needing to eat except for enjoyment--right now, Lan Zhan could probably go a couple weeks before he started getting hungry. Some other things, too.”

“So if he keeps growing in strength, he’ll stop aging and you… won’t.” A dark curl of alarm twisted through Dorian’s gut. 

Wei Wuxian’s eyes cut away and he swallowed. “If it were just me, I’d say that my flute and my talismans are enough, but--”

“You died once already, you said.”

“Yes.”

Carefully, Dorian asked, “How did he take it?” 

“Oh, you know, he was in mourning for thirteen years until I came back.”

“ _Vishente kaffas,_ ” Dorian swore under his breath. “You were dead for _thirteen years?_ ”

“Yeah. So if you’ve got ideas, I’ll take them,” Wei Wuxian said, feigning light casualness so obviously that Dorian nearly winced. “I’m not turning up anything in our books--but we know about things that you don’t even have words for, so maybe you’ve got some things of your own too.”

Dorian let out his breath carefully. “If it were me,” he began. “If it were me--and I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand the nuances of what you’re working with, but I _am_ one of the leading scholars in Thedas in my field-- _if it were me_ , and I had lost the bit of me that connects me to the Fade, I’d probably try to recreate the conditions that triggered the connection in the first place, the one that would have happened when I was too small to remember.”

Wei Wuxian was watching him with bright eyes. “Yeah? Like what? Has your side researched that?”

Dorian scoffed. “You must be joking. Research how the connection to the Fade is sparked into being? And risk discovering something that would let just _anyone_ access it? Even the soporati? _Peasants_ , doing magic? Perish the thought! You see, we quite enjoy having power that other people don’t. Makes it ever so much easier to control and exploit the weak and helpless, you see.” He sighed. “There are a few _extremely niche_ eccentrics doddering around in the most theoretical academic circles who have idly mused on the subject and seen fit to write said musinigs down, but--frankly, elder brother, I’m hypothesizing extemporaneously here.”

“Right, I got that. What would you _do_? Where would you start?”

Dorian opened his mouth. “Ah. Well.” How to put this in such a way that wouldn’t scandalize him overmuch? “Where would I start. Well, you see, when a mage and another mage love each other very much, sometimes they--” Wei Wuxian burst out laughing, and Dorian relaxed incrementally. “In all seriousness, Tevinter scholars have established that there is some hereditary relation to the strength of your connection with the Fade--I myself am the product of generations of carefully coordinated and strategic… family planning, shall we say.”

Wei Wuxian’s cheeks were a little pink, but he nodded. “When cultivators have kids, they usually become cultivators too.”

Ah, good, they were all on the same page. “And sometimes there’s a random prodigy that crops up here and there?” Another nod. “And the prodigy gets swept up and taken in by one of these…” He waved his hand to indicate the entirety of the Cloud Recesses.

“Sects. As a disciple. Yes, frequently.”

“Right. So. We also know that Fade connection happens well before birth.”

Wei Wuxian’s interest sharpened. “ _Does_ it. How’d you figure that out?”

“Well, because once in a while, a child will be born that is already possessed by demons, and demons only possess mages. So.”

“Ah.”

“So to answer what I, Dorian Pavus, would do in this situation… I would ponder on the scanty amount of written research, and about Fade-connection being triggered even before birth, and I would compare that to some of the books I read sneakily under the covers, about the amount of power that can be raised with particular ritual magics, and I might conclude that it’d be worth my time to start the experimental phase of research by having some extremely vigorous sex with the most powerful mage in the vicinity who could be convinced to take his trousers off. Not that I would expect that to simply _fix_ the problem,” Dorian said quickly, before Wei Wuxian’s face could get any redder. “But that’s where I’d _start_.”

“Does your side have a word for that?”

“No, not particularly. ‘Sex magic’, I suppose, but that’s hardly specific. Nobody in Tevinter bothers with such pedestrian things. _Why would you ever share your power with someone?,_ they’d say. _Why would you admit that your own power is insufficient?_ Terrible political strategy, for one thing, and for another, the ego of the average altus would never allow that sort of honest vulnerability. Why, does yours have a word for it?” 

“Yes. It’s called dual cultivation, and there’s books about it,” Wei Wuxian said, not quite meeting his eyes.

“Of course there are. Have you read them?”

“Ah. No, it hadn’t occurred as an option.”

“Mm,” said Dorian, feigning sympathy. “Terribly inconvenient area of study, isn’t it? You’d have to go to such great lengths to find a local mage powerful enough to help efficiently, and once you did, oh, it’d be such trouble to convince him to assist with such a _tedious and dreary_ sort of endeavor, if only you knew someone who was, ahem, _up to the task_ , as it were--”

“Could we not, please?” Wei Wuxian said sharply--sharper than Dorian was expecting, and it brought him up short.

“Of course. My apologies.” He turned away a little, so that he wasn’t directly facing Wei Wuxian, giving him space to collect himself without scrutiny. “I’ve been told I can be terribly thoughtless when my tongue gets away from me. You would think that I would be better about minding what I say, considering how much I hate being teased myself. I shan’t say anything more on the matter.”

“Thank you.”

“Shall we turn our attention to something else entirely? Perhaps something entirely useless and trivial? You mentioned talismans--I’m sure you must have something purely for showing off.”

That helped smooth things over immensely. Wei Wuxian demonstrated a few very clever tricks, some of which were very pretty indeed, and all of which had useful applications. Dorian was particularly fond of the swarm of glittering golden butterflies. 

“I can’t seem to manage inventing anything just for amusement,” Wei Wuxian said regretfully. “They always seem to end up having seven more practical applications than I realized they would.”

“Hmm,” Dorian said, lying flat on his back in the grass and gazing sleepily up at the butterflies shimmering above their heads. “Name one pointlessly _useful_ thing you could make, then.”

“I could probably enchant a cup to keep my alcohol at the perfect temperature.”

“How dare you call that pointless? Elder brother, how dare you.”

“Ha. Okay, your turn.”

“I’d invent a spell to keep people from noticing things about me if I didn’t want them to.”

“Oh, _yes_ ,” Wei Wuxian said vehemently. “Think of how much effort that would save.”

“Right? You could just say, _yes, of course I’m fine, there’s no need to pay any mind to me at all_ , and people would just say to themselves, _Yes, he seems fine, nothing to see here._ ” 

“And then you could just--” Wei Wuxian makes an emphatic gesture which Dorian takes to mean _You could just feel whatever you wanted to feel, and nobody would see right through you or feel burdened or inconvenienced by you, and it would be safe and you could rest._

“Exactly. Yes. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

By the time they had exhausted their respective repertoires of useless or nearly-useless spells and talismans, dawn was breaking, and neither of them had said a word for a solid hour, nor even so much as looked at each other. _What a thoughtful gesture_ , Dorian reflected just as he dropped off into a doze, right there in the grass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Glossary of terms: 
> 
> Qunlat -- the language of the Qun, the religion/ethnic group/cult that Bull originally comes from. Extremely structured to the point that members do not have names to signify identity, they only have the terms of their function in how they serve the Qun.  
> Tal-Vashoth -- "true grey", someone who has left or been thrown out of the Qun. This is a major in-game crossroads point for Bull's character arc; based on choices the player makes, he will either continue with the Qun or become a Tal-Vashoth. In this fic, that choice already happened, he's Tal-Vashoth.  
> Ben Hassrath -- the Qun's secret police/spies.  
> Hissrad -- "liar". Bull's name under the Qun. He was a VERY good Ben Hassrath agent.  
> Soporati -- the lower class in Tevinter (Dorian's home country), aka non-mages  
> Altus -- the upper class in Tevinter, aka mages  
> Kadan -- well, you'll find that out next chapter, won't you ;D
> 
> (I'm on [tumblr](http://ariaste.tumblr.com) in my fannish identity! I'm on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/_alexrowland) in my professional author identity! Come say hi!)
> 
> In the next chapter: Some idiots start getting their shit together.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ohhhhh my god, this chapter was much later than I was expecting it to be. October turned out to be wildly stressful for a number of reasons (up to and including the publication day of my new book), and then I had decision-paralysis about how exactly I wanted the last couple scenes to play out. But it's done!!!! To everyone who has been waiting eagerly for this final chapter, thank you so much for your patience!
> 
> Thank you as well to all my cheerleaders and beta readers, especially Dove, who has a truly meticulous eye for proofreading. :D
> 
> Last note: Just wanna point out that the rating has gone up!

Wei Wuxian, leaning back against the tree they’d made themselves comfortable under, cracked an eye open at the sound of approaching footsteps and voices. A moment later, he registered one of the voices as Sizhui. He blinked a few times, blearily, and craned around the trunk to look up the path--yes, his beloved son, far too tidy and neat for this early in the morning, with a basket full of vegetable scraps hanging from his elbow. Dorian Pavus’s not-zhiji was with him, walking with a surprisingly light step for his size, hardly any noise at all. Sizhui was pointing to things here and there and saying their names: “Tree. Path. Bird,” and the Iron Bull was nodding and repeating them dutifully. 

“Oh! Wei-qianbei!” Sizhui said, spotting him. He turned to Iron Bull, grinning, and pointed, saying informatively, “Wei-qianbei.”

“Your father,” Iron Bull replied, amused. “I know.”

“Right!” Sizhui turned that sweet smile back on Wei Wuxian. “Good morning, Wei-qianbei, why are you up so early?”

“I’m not up early, little radish, I’m up exceptionally late. Again.”

Sizhui nudged Iron Bull’s elbow. “Good morning, Wei-gongzi,” he said, and mimed bowing to Wei Wuxian.

“Good morning, Wei-gongzi,” Iron Bull said. His accent was quite fine. “Morning?” Iron Bull said, and gestured towards the eastern horizon.

“That’s right! And then: Day,” Sizhui added, pointing straight up, and then towards the west, “Evening, and uh…” He made the universal mime for sleeping and said, “Night.” They had just reached Wei Wuxian’s side at this point, and when Sizhui looked down again, he jumped a little. “Oh, Dorian Pavus is here.” 

“Indeed he is. He is also up exceptionally late again.”

Sizhui, to Iron Bull, said, “Dorian Pavus is here,” and then once again clarified through gesture the words for _here_ and _over there_.

“Shall I wake him up so we have that translation spell?” Wei Wuxian asked, still a little bleary but mostly overcome with the cuteness of Sizhui being such a thoughtful little teacher. Ah, what a sweet boy. What pretty manners, what a gracious host. He would have to tell Lan Zhan all about this later.

“Oh, ah, it’s not necessary,” Sizhui said. “We were just going to feed the bunnies.”

But Dorian made a grumpy noise and slitted his eyes open. 

Sizhui said something which, at Wei Wuxian’s best guess, was probably _good morning_ in Dorian’s own language--what a sweet and clever boy. Dorian Pavus pushed himself to sit up, made several noises of disgust and dismay, rubbed his hands across his face, and started making the figures of the translation spell with his hands as Iron Bull said something to him in a low, amused rumble.

It was _strange_ to feel the spell taking shape as someone was already in the process of speaking--tone was already there, tone was easy; then came intent--curiosity, a little tease, a whiff of concern; and _then_ the words, just in time to catch the end of Iron Bull’s sentence: “--had another long night, eh, zhiji?” 

Wei Wuxian froze. Dorian Pavus froze. 

Quite unwillingly--and, Wei Wuxian was sure, to their mutual horror--they met each other’s eyes. Wei Wuxian forced his exhausted mind into gear, forced his memory to play back the _sound_ of the words rather than the meaning that had filtered through the translation spell. _Something something, eh, kadan._

Wei Wuxian tried to remember what the sound of the word that Dorian Pavus used was--he hadn’t been paying particularly close attention, but _kadan_ didn’t sound like a word that would fit in Dorian’s language, the cadence was wrong… which meant it was Bull’s?

Dorian Pavus was blinking rapidly. “I,” he said at last, gathering himself together. “Yes. We did have a long night, Bull. No demons, as you can see. No changing the entire landscape of magical scholarship today. Never mind that. Lan Sizhui, good morning, you’re far too fresh and lively for this hour of the day. When I was your age, I was being a dissolute little degenerate. Please explain yourself.”

Sizhui only laughed. “I have to wake up early to feed the bunnies. Would you and Wei-qianbei like to join us?”

“Thank you, but no,” Dorian Pavus said. “I have suddenly remembered something extremely urgent that I have to do back in my quarters.” 

“I will walk you there, didi,” Wei Wuxian said, jumping to his feet. “Easy to get lost on the path back, wouldn’t want you wandering off into the woods.”

“Terribly kind of you,” Dorian Pavus said, rolling up to his feet. “Enjoy your… rabbits.”

“Thank you!” Sizhui said brightly in Dorian Pavus’s language, accompanied by the characteristic pressure of the translation spell that was becoming nearly unnoticeable to Wei Wuxian now. “Wei-qianbei, um, I think Hanguang-jun was a little worried about you again this morning.”

Oh heavens. He should have gone back last night, should have crawled into bed and curled up next to Lan Zhan, maybe wriggled closer for warmth as Lan Zhan always allowed him to do without complaint when it was chilly. He grimaced. “Ah, thank you, A-Yuan, I’ll… go say sorry.”

They parted with a few more pleasantries--Wei Wuxian was distracted, thinking guiltily of leaving Lan Zhan alone in bed all night when he’d said he was only going out for a walk, and so he was startled when Dorian Pavus grabbed his arm just above the elbow, hard enough to hurt.

“I need two things from you,” Dorian Pavus said. “First, I need to ask a question. Second, I need us to never speak of this again.”

“Is it about what Iron Bull said?” 

Dorian Pavus gritted his teeth, looking off into the distance rather than meeting Wei Wuxian’s eyes. Wei Wuxian did him the courtesy of doing the same. “Yes. What did you… hear? The spell came up just as--”

“Yeah. Uh. With his mouth, he said _kadan_. Through the spell, I heard _zhiji_. I want to ask a question.”

“Fine. Fine. What?”

“When I spoke just now, did the spell give you the same word twice?”

A long silence.

“Not… quite. Almost. The spell--you and I have gotten very lucky with the spell, or else perhaps it is simply that our minds work in similar enough ways that it integrates our meanings smoothly, but--usually it loses some nuance, I think, in particularly idiomatic words. Will you… allow me to test something?”

“Yes, by all means. Science, at this hour of the morning? Sure, why not?”

“Alright. I’m going to say two words, please pay attention. Ready? Zhiji. Beloved.” Wei Wuxian watched his lips carefully, listened hard to the sounds. The first was a little familiar--he’d heard Dorian Pavus say that word-sound before when Wei Wuxian was first explaining the relationship between himself and Lan Zhan. The second--

“They weren’t the same.”

“Can you repeat the second one? The sound, I mean.” 

“Say it again?”

“Beloved,” said the spell, but Dorian’s mouth said--

“ _Amatus_? The meaning I heard was _beloved_.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” said Dorian Pavus with great feeling.

“So,” Wei Wuxian said, after a moment when Dorian Pavus had been staring into the middle distance for an uncomfortable amount of time. “I guess that’s what you heard for--”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Dorian Pavus said, dragging him forward along the path. “Let’s never speak of it.” 

*

Wei Wuxian had heard _soulmate_. Dorian had heard--

It wasn’t quite about what he had heard. It was about the meaning that the spell had pressed into his brain: Center, the core of the chest, a steady place to stand. _My heart_. 

Amatus.

Dorian felt in an instant like he’d been filled up with Wei Wuxian’s glimmering golden butterflies, swarms of them. 

He slid the door of his quarters closed with a slam and pressed his fingertips to his temples, letting his breath out slowly. “Cole,” he said softly.

“Dorian,” Cole said anxiously, appearing right at his elbow. “Confusion, whirling, unsteady. _It can’t be true, can it?_ It is. He’d tell you if you asked.”

Dorian breathed again carefully. “Did he say it on purpose, or was it an accident?” 

Cole put his head on one side. “Neither. He isn’t hiding from you. _Dorian’s a smart guy, he’ll figure it out in his own time. I’m not going anywhere_. It’s all loud, so loud, horrible and loud, except when he’s near you. You make his head quiet. An open window, an unlocked door, a clear sky. Stillness, flowers blooming, birds singing in the morning. The first glimpse of new leaves at the very beginning of spring, when the sky is still grey and cold and the ground is muddy.”

“Alright.” Another slow breath. “Alright, thank you, Cole.” Forcing lightness into his voice, which was pointless because it wouldn’t fool Cole anyway, he said, “Why don’t you take my mind off of this? How are you, how have you been enjoying the visit?”

“I haven’t caused any diplomatic incidents, Dorian,” Cole said happily. “I’ve been talking to so many people--they like me, they said so.”

Dorian smiled. “That’s good, Cole. They should like you, there’s a lot about you to like.”

“I spoke to Lan Sizhui. He was kind to me. I felt his hurts, but they’re all old and healed now. Some of them he forgot.” Cole peered worriedly out from under the brim of his hat. “I didn’t tell them to him, Dorian, you said sometimes being reminded hurts more.”

“Good.”

“He said I remind him of his uncle. He said he wanted to introduce us. He played a song to try to speak to me.”

“What? He wanted to speak to you with a song?”

Cole nodded energetically. “He said that’s how they speak to spirits, but the song was strange, Dorian, it spoke inside my head. I thought people only spoke with words. But Lan Wangji has a speaking-song too. That one isn’t for spirits, it’s for Wei Wuxian.” 

Dorian paused. “You’ve been speaking to the Chief Cultivator?”

“He has a hurt, Dorian,” Cole said, his voice going distant and dreamy. “Turning, glancing back, _where is he?_ , forgetting for a moment, _did he really come back, was I dreaming? If I was, it will be worse to wake up_. When he runs away, the bed is empty, the house is cold. Cold like winter, like snow falling, like kneeling on the stone path and waiting for her door to open. _Why didn’t it open? Where did she go? When you lock people up, they disappear._ _Stay. Stay_. He can’t keep him, he won’t be his father, but he wants, and he hurts, and it goes down so _deep_. Dorian--”

“Cole,” he said awkwardly, finally finding his tongue. “Remember what I said about talking about people’s private things?”

Cole blinked at him. “This isn’t private, Dorian. It’s in the song.”

“What song?”

“The song in Lan Wangji’s head. The song to call Wei Wuxian back. He plays it out loud for anyone to hear, Dorian, it’s not private.”

Dorian thought, briefly, of Lan Wangji and his total lack of subtlety in regards to Wei Wuxian. “Okay, fair point. Still.”

“He wants people to know,” Cole insisted. “It’s not private. He wants Wei Wuxian to know most of all, but he is frightened of frightening him, of chasing him away, of asking too much--he asked for too much once. _Come back to Gusu with me_. He wants Wei Wuxian to ask. He told me, Dorian, he played the song for me.”

“Maybe he should play the song for Wei Wuxian,” Dorian said. “Has he thought of that?”

“He plays it every day, Dorian. It’s a speaking-song, but Wei Wuxian isn’t hearing all of it. He’s not a spirit.”

Dorian closed his eyes. “Yes, well. Seems to be a common problem around here, isn’t it?”

“Bull didn’t play you a song, though.”

“Yes, I know,” Dorian said peevishly. 

“You’re scared. The feeling is too big. It hurts you to think that it might hurt you. _He’ll take it away, I’ll do something wrong and he’ll take it away to punish me, turn his back, they always do._ But a chance of something else--held and warm, beloved, amatus, _maybe I was wrong, how wonderful would it be if I was wrong about myself._ A long lesson, spanning a life--don’t hope for more, don’t ask for anything but what you’re offered.”

Dorian breathed and let Cole’s words wash over him--it was easier to let Cole pick the tangles free than try to do battle with them in his own mind, and at least this way he could stay silent and pretend that he had some dignity left.

“ _Wouldn’t he look handsome with wrinkles?_ A house in the country, hidden and home, miles from anywhere, no Magisterium, _I could take up gardening, wait, no, too much dirt_. But the dirt is good, Dorian, the dirt would love you back too. So many things want to love you.”

“Alright, Cole,” Dorian said, no louder than a whisper. “Alright.”

*

Wei Wuxian slid open the door of the Jingshi and nearly jumped out of his skin to see Lan Zhan sitting at the table. “ _Fuck_ , you startled me, gege,” he said, steadying himself with one hand on the door and one over his heart. “What are you doing here this late in the morning? Don’t you have classes today?” 

“I delegated them,” Lan Zhan said. 

Wei Wuxian had only meant to stop in and change into fresh clothes and tidy his hair before going off to find Lan Zhan, but--“You okay?” There weren’t any letters on the table, nor a book, nor the qin. Only a teapot and a steaming cup, half-empty. 

Lan Zhan didn’t answer, just dropped his eyes to the teacup and took it gently in both hands.

Wei Wuxian’s heart twisted and he went directly to Lan Zhan’s side, flinging himself onto one of the cushions and leaning back against the table on one elbow. “Hey. Hey, what’s going on? Sizhui said you were looking for me.”

“It was nothing important.”

Wei Wuxian swayed sideways and bumped Lan Zhan’s arm with his shoulder, pouting. “Er-gege doesn’t want to tell me?”

Lan Zhan set down his teacup. “How was your evening?”

“Oh, uh--fine, actually. Um. Dorian Pavus and I talked about scholarly things and uh. Well. He had some new ideas about things I could research for… for my golden core.”

“I look forward to hearing about them.”

Wei Wuxian looked away, his cheeks stinging with a blush. “Haha, Lan Zhan, you’d better be careful what you say, you have no idea what kinds of things a couple drunk louts like us might come up with. What about you, how did you sleep?” 

“Not well,” Lan Zhan said. He was using his extra-flat voice, the one he used to try to hide things. Wei Wuxian shot him a worried look out of the corner of his eye. “The spirit came to speak to me again.”

“What, that Cole? Wait, again? Oh--I suppose we did send him to you that first night to tell you he was a spirit of compassion. He came back?”

“He has come both nights when you’ve left.”

“Oh. Did you make a friend?”

“No.” 

“What do you talk about?”

“We don’t. I play music, and he… reads my heart.” The merest pause, and then, “Wei Ying--” 

It sounded reckless, wild, like Lan Zhan had hit a limit and… and he wasn’t saying anything else, his lips pressed together as if to hold back words. 

“What is it?” 

Lan Zhan was still very tense in that way that meant he was restraining with all his might the impulse to move--a bowstring drawn to its utter limit. “Xiongzhang has been in conference with the Inquisitor. We will be sending cultivators to assist them.”

“Yeah? Good. Sounds like they need it.”

The barest pause. “Does Wei Ying wish to go with them?” 

Wei Wuxian brightened, but only a little, because the question didn’t seem quite like a gift or a treat. “I mean. It’s kind of the biggest night-hunt ever, right? Weird foreign magic, big demons to fight, sounds like a great trip.”

Lan Zhan nodded once, his expression still stiff and… closed off. It hadn’t been closed off to Wei Wuxian for… ages. “I will tell xiongzhang.”

Wei Wuxian frowned. “Are you not looking forward to it? I thought you said you wanted to go out night-hunting with me again.”

Lan Zhan’s eyes flicked to him for the first time since he’d sat down. “Wei Ying wishes me to accompany him?” 

Wei Wuxian’s jaw dropped. “What! What are you talking about, why wouldn’t you come? They’ve got chaos, right? Hanguang-jun goes where the chaos is! Why on earth wouldn’t you come?”

Lan Zhan lowered his eyes again and said nothing. 

Wei Wuxian frowned and nudged him with his shoulder again, harder this time, hard enough that Lan Zhan swayed a little. “Hey. Hey, are you--” His breath caught. “Look, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to, if you need a break or whatever, that’s fine, I can go and take care of it and come back and it’ll only be a few months. But if that’s what it’s about, then I wish you’d have the decency to _say it to my face_ instead of letting me embarrass myself by missing all the hints that you were tired of--”

“ _Wei Ying_.” 

Wei Wuxian snapped his mouth closed on his mounting tirade and breathed heavily for a moment. Lan Zhan was looking at him again. At least there was that. As long as Lan Zhan was looking at him, it couldn’t go too wrong. He forced himself to keep his mouth shut, for once in his sorry life.

“I thought you wanted some time,” Lan Zhan said quietly, simply.

Wei Wuxian opened his mouth to jump straight back into the tirade and just managed to shove it down into submission, into a single word: “ _Why?_ ” 

“You have… drawn away, the past few days. You go out all night and you don’t come home. You prefer to sleep outside on the ground.” Lan Zhan’s eyes cut away again, glancing across the Jingshi to their bed. 

Wei Wuxian kept his eyes fixed on Lan Zhan. “You asked if I was happy here and I said yes. I said anywhere Lan Zhan is, I’m happy.”

“Wei Ying is free to change his mind. Wei Ying often does.”

 _Fucker. Asshole_. “Not about my zhiji, though,” he snarled. “Yeah, I said a lot of dumb shit to you in my past life--do you think I’d send you away now? Do you think I’m capable of saying _Leave me alone, Lan Wangji_ in seriousness? Why are you even offering me the chance to go off by myself? What the _fuck?_ ”

Lan Zhan sat as still as stone, his jaw clenched, his hands clasped together on the table, white knuckled. He opened his mouth, and said:

“Spirit.”

And just like blinking, there was that spirit that went along with Dorian and his friends--Cole--with his very wide-brimmed floppy hat, and grubby clothes, and strangely fish-pale skin, and even more strangely luminous eyes. Those odd eyes were locked on Lan Zhan, and the spirit was muttering under his breath.

“Hold it back, restraint against a roaring tempest, pushing the sea back by will alone--no, too much, it’s always too much, it hurts to feel. _Restrain yourself, A-Zhan,_ ” this in a different, deeper voice, stern and snappish--almost like Lan Qiren--“ _Rise above emotion. You’re getting to be a young man now, you know better than this. Do not burden your higher mind with such menial things._ You tried. You wanted to please them, you wanted to be good, so you tried so hard, _why can’t I let go of them_. Battling to be better, bruised and betrayed by your own misbehaving heart--”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said softly. Lan Zhan’s eyes had fallen closed. He was so tense now that he wasn’t even trembling.

“--And then the sun rose over the wall, but it wasn’t the sun on the wall, it was a boy, and--chasing, yearning, questions tumbling like rockslides. Everything crumbling to dust, all the things you’d been told were strong. Except the sun was still there, and--you can’t hold a sun, you’ll burn your hands, _Wei Ying, come back to Gusu with me_ \-- ** _no,_** _no, I won’t hold him here, I won’t be my father_ \--but the wanting comes in waves, sweeping your feet from under you, pulling you down, swamped in salt. Wanting, wanting too much, wanting and waiting and wishing, whispering _this is enough, this is enough_.”

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said again, more urgently. He put his hand on Lan Zhan’s arm, took his hand.

“Consumed by fire and fear, too much, too strong, too much-- _the things I’ve thought about_ \--tying him, holding him here, keeping him close, don’t let him leave-- _I survived it once, I can survive it again_ \--starving and sick, famine for years and now a feast before you, restraint, restraint, starving, but you mustn’t grab or take or ask for too much, it will all be taken again, famine and fear, is even one mouthful too much--”

“ _Zhiji,”_ Wei Wuxian said, tugging at Lan Zhan’s hand, and then Lan Zhan opened his eyes. 

_He’s hurting_ , Wei Wuxian thought, at the same moment that the spirit Cole said, “Spoiled it again, fell to failure and flaw, the wanting never wanes--”

“Enough,” Wei Wuxian said, and Cole fell eerily silent. “Enough. Please. That’s enough, please go.”

“I’m sorry,” Cole said, his voice quavering a little. “I’m sorry, I said too much, did I go too deep? There’s so much hurt, I tried to heal it, but I...”

“It’s alright,” Wei Wuxian whispered. “Go to Dorian, please.” He had a tune on his tongue, ready to whistle to chase the spirit off by force if he wouldn’t leave quietly, but--

Gone. Between one thought and the next, gone. 

Wei Wuxian let out his breath and tugged on Lan Zhan’s hand again. Pulled him close, unresisting, and let him slump against Wei Wuxian’s chest. 

Wei Wuxian wound his arms around Lan Zhan’s shoulders and pressed his nose into Lan Zhan’s hair, still loose from bed. Held him close. Slowly, Lan Zhan’s arms came around Wei Wuxian’s waist and a little shiver passed through him, cascading down from his shoulders under Wei Wuxian’s hands.

“There,” he whispered into Lan Zhan’s soft dark hair. “Silly boy. Trying to send me off to have adventures so you can stay home and play sad music all alone, is that it? I make one friend and the world ends? Does zhiji mean nothing to you?” Chiding words, but all in the softest whisper, muffled against the top of that beloved head. “Don’t you know by now that you’re my favorite person? Don’t you know you’re mine?” Another shiver, stronger this time, and Wei Wuxian smoothed his hands in slow sweeps up and down Lan Zhan’s back. “Carrying around all these secrets from your zhiji, what a bad boy.”

“It was too much.”

“Tch, please! Upstart. Amateur! I _invented_ too-much. You couldn’t _too-much_ me if you tried for a year.”

Lan Zhan said nothing, but his hands tightened in the back of Wei Wuxian’s robes.

“Let’s never be apart again, okay? You can tie our wrists with your ribbon again, and we’ll go everywhere together and I’ll never be out of your sight. You can drag me out of bed every morning at five and I’ll nap next to you while you’re doing whatever, and then you’ll have to nap next to me when it’s late at night and I’m still working, yeah? If my zhiji is so upset about me going off just to the other end of the Cloud Recesses, then I won’t even leave his side from now on!” Lan Zhan mumbled something into the fabric of Wei Wuxian’s robes which sounded like a mulish little _Mark your words_. Wei Wuxian laughed aloud. “Do you think I’m joking? Lan Zhan should know by now that I never joke about serious things! Here, do it right now. I’m not kidding, Lan Zhan, do it.”

Lan Zhan sat up--Wei Wuxian only loosened his arms enough to allow it, but kept his hands on Lan Zhan’s shoulders, watching as Lan Zhan pulled his ribbon off and tied one end of it around his own wrist. His ears were pink.

“Ah, you’re leaving so much slack, is that going to be too far? I’ll be able to go a whole foot away from you! Shouldn’t it be closer? Won’t you miss me?” 

The pink spread to Lan Zhan’s cheeks. “Foolish,” he muttered, picking up one of Wei Wuxian’s wrists and tying the other end around it with a neat knot. Wei Wuxian tested it a little--loose enough to move freely, but not loose enough for him to slip out.

He gave Lan Zhan his brightest, shiniest grin. “There! Doesn’t that help?”

Lan Zhan kept glancing down at the ribbon, still very pink-cheeked. He gave a single small nod. 

Wei Wuxian couldn’t resist the urge to reach out and touch that cute blush with his fingertips. “What else? Lan Zhan can’t be sad, it’s not allowed. There’s a precept forbidding it.”

Lan Zhan made a tiny sound which was the equivalent of a scoff.

“It’s true, there is! It’s in the book of rules for the sect of the Yiling Patriarch! Rule one: Don’t get out of bed until you have to. Rule two: Eat and drink only tasty things. Rule three: Lan Zhan being sad is absolutely forbidden. You’re not going to break the rules, are you? Aiya, what a naughty boy. Too rebellious!”

The set of Lan Zhan’s mouth had softened a little--not quite a smile, but… better. Progress. Wei Wuxian played with the ribbon between them, using it to idly tug at Lan Zhan’s wrist. “Come on, tell me what else will help. Why does some spirit get to know all your secrets and feelings, just because he can read your mind? That’s not fair, is it! Your zhiji should hear them first!” He pouted as hugely and cutely as he could. “So you’ll have to tell your zhiji yourself, until he can figure out how the mind-reading thing is done.”

Lan Zhan shot the quickest little glance at him--no, not at him, at his shoulder, where Wei Wuxian pulled him close before. Wei Wuxian grinned and opened his arms. “Oh, is that all? Lan Zhan can have hugs whenever he wants, he doesn’t have to wait for bedtime.” 

Lan Zhan’s ears flamed red again, but he shifted closer and lowered his head back to Wei Wuxian’s shoulder--it was a little awkward with the ribbon tying them together, but Wei Wuxian enfolded him the best he could and squeezed tight, rocking them a little from side to side and humming tunelessly. “Is this what the spirit meant about feasts and famines and only taking a mouthful?”

“Mm,” said Lan Zhan, but it was the noncommittal one.

“A little bit, huh? And a little bit something else?” Another soft _mm_ . “Hmm,” he said back. “That thing about _Restrain yourself, A-Zhan_ , was that Lan Qiren who told you that? That feelings were beneath you?”

“It was many people.” A breath, a hint of frustration. Wei Wuxian rubbed his back again, sliding the ribbon-tied hand up around the back of Lan Zhan’s neck and into his hair, scratching gently. “I have failed consistently at eliminating emotion.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve never even tried. Can you imagine?” He rubbed his face against the side of Lan Zhan’s head. “I like your feelings. You can have them, I like them.” He could feel the heat of the blush come back into Lan Zhan’s ear, pressed against his cheek, and couldn’t help the bubble of laughter. 

“They are… too much,” Lan Zhan said, even quieter.

“Now you’re insulting me, er-gege! Me, your greatest equal, your match in all things! You claim so presumptuously that you can out-feelings me? Such arrogance, young master! Have we not ended with a draw every time we’ve sparred? And don’t count right _now,_ it’s not my fault Mo Xuanyu was made of wet noodles.”

An annoyed little huff, right against his neck--it sent goosebumps all the way down his back and up his scalp.

“Why are you letting my zhiji go hungry, huh? Do you think I want him to starve?”

“No,” Lan Zhan said, no louder than a breath.

“No, of course I don’t. What sort of feast is it that you’re keeping yourself from? Who’s gonna take it away from you if you eat too much? Certainly not me!” The silence lasted long enough that Wei Wuxian prodded at Lan Zhan’s ribs. “If you can’t say it, just give me a little hint and I’ll try to guess what you mean, yeah?”

Another long silence, but this one had an edge to it, as if Lan Zhan was on the verge of speaking. “I want to see Wei Ying every day,” he said at last, slowly, like a bunny sticking a single whisker out of a burrow to check whether it was safe.

“Yes! Let’s do that.”

Still slowly: “I want to eat with Wei Ying every day.”

“Okay! And sleep next to Wei Ying every night, even when he hogs the covers?”

“Yes.”

“And tell secrets in the dark?”

“Yes.”

“And walk around with our wrists tied together? And go on night-hunts with the kids, and gossip about people we know, and protect the weak and live without regrets?”

A nod against his shoulder.

“Ah, but we already do all those things, and it’s not enough!”

“It is enough,” Lan Zhan said instantly, firmly.

“Feasts aren’t about getting _enough_ to eat, they’re about stuffing your face until you can’t move. Give me another hint.”

It took a moment. Wei Wuxian forced himself not to fidget, though his heart was beginning to flutter in his chest. He kept his hands moving smoothly over Lan Zhan’s back and through his hair.

“I want to… be close to Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said.

Wei Wuxian’s heart caught in his chest. “Yeah, yes.” Was Lan Zhan trembling just a little? It was difficult to tell, he was always wearing so many layers. “Do you want to hug Wei Ying every day too?”

“Yes.” His voice was clearer now, steady as a rock--oh, brave boy, bravest boy--

“You should,” Wei Wuxian said recklessly. His heart was bunny-quick in his chest. “You should hug Wei Ying all the time. You should never not be hugging him.”

Lan Zhan’s free arm, the one that wasn’t tied with the ribbon, tightened around Wei Wuxian’s waist, and his other hand clenched in the front of Wei Wuxian’s robes. Wei Wuxian laid his palm flat on Lan Zhan’s back and closed his eyes, feeling for the heartbeat--it was thundering just as fast as his own.

He wet his lips and turned his face against Lan Zhan’s hair. “You could hug Wei Ying even closer. You could carry him around. That would be--good.”

Lan Zhan was still for a moment, breathing, and then he moved forward and Wei Wuxian let himself be toppled very slowly onto his back, Lan Zhan bearing him down and flowing close around him, tucking himself against Wei Wuxian’s side, face still hidden against Wei Wuxian’s shoulder. His ears were scarlet, burning hot, and Wei Wuxian impulsively touched the tip of his nose to the one he could reach.

“We could sleep like this every night,” Wei Wuxian whispered.

“Yes.” Lan Zhan’s voice was a little rough. Wei Wuxian’s heart kicked in his chest again. The room felt like it was getting… warm. Very warm. He was a little lightheaded, breathless.

“Is this--” His voice cracked. He swallowed hard and tried again. “This is. Enough? Or… more?”

“Yes,” said Lan Zhan, and Wei Wuxian grabbed for his hand, the ribbon tangling between their fingers--Lan Zhan squeezed back just as hard.

A thousand questions filled Wei Wuxian’s mouth until he was too overwhelmed with them to choose the next one: _Does he want--maybe we could--if I don’t ask, is he going to--are we--_

Entirely without meaning to, his free hand ran up the length of Lan Zhan’s spine to the back of his neck, drawing him even closer. “Yes,” he breathed. “More is--yes.” He felt Lan Zhan’s head turn just a little, enough that the sides of their faces were pressed together, Lan Zhan’s mouth an inch away from the corner of his jaw, shuddering breaths hot against his skin. “As much as you want. No more starving.”

“Wei Ying.” Choked, wild, desperate, terrified. 

Lan Zhan was shivering properly now, as if it was straining every muscle in his body to hold himself back. His free arm was a steel bar over Wei Wuxian’s waist, his fingers digging into Wei Wuxian’s side hard enough to ache, and Wei Wuxian had no air left in him at all to say anything except: “Come on, sweetheart, it’s okay.”

Lan Zhan made a feral noise and surged forward against him, biting viciously into his throat, and Wei Wuxian sucked in a huge breath, his neck arching while the rest of him went absolutely boneless. He heard himself say, “Yes, _yes--_ ” and then Lan Zhan was wrenching his head to the side with one hand tight on his jaw, crashing their mouths together hard as if he meant to eat Wei Wuxian alive, and Wei Wuxian could only laugh, giddy and euphoric, and pull him closer by the front of his robes and gasp gleefully between kisses, “Oh, is that all? Gege, are you still holding back? Don’t you want--mm!--don’t you want anything more?” until Lan Zhan was _wild_ on him, tearing at his clothes, slamming Wei Wuxian’s wrists to the floor, snarling into his ear, “ _Yes_.”

*

Dorian embraced his cowardice and hid. 

It was not particularly difficult--he was exhausted from being up all night twice in a row. Even though his thoughts were frantic, like small trapped animals throwing themselves violently against the bars of their cages, he fell asleep with relative ease once he was in bed.

With such emotional turmoil, he would have expected to encounter at least one or two demons in his dreams, but all was quiet--a place with this many mages was likely warded backwards and forwards. 

He awoke in the late afternoon, ravenously hungry, and left his rooms to beg food from the kitchens. They were very politely confused by his lack of interest in waiting for dinner, but when he mentioned that he’d been doing research with Wei Wuxian, their faces cleared. “Oh, a friend of Young Master Wei,” said one of the servants, and they all nodded sagely.

He slunk surreptitiously back to his room, glancing around constantly to ensure he was not spotted by anyone he was avoiding, and made it all the way back to his door before--

“Dorian!” 

He winced and turned around. “Inquisitor, good afternoon.”

Lavellan jogged up to him, smiling. “Missed lunch?”

“Ah--yes, I had a late night.”

The Inquisitor’s smile broadened. “Having a nice time?”

“Something like that,” Dorian muttered. “How are negotiations going?”

“Oh, very well! Beautifully well. They’re very generous, and Cole’s been such a help. They adore him. Zewu-jun--that’s the Chief Cultivator’s older brother, Lan Xichen, he’s the head of this clan--he’s already sent messages to some of the other clans--”

“Sects.”

“--sects, okay--anyway, and they’re gathering people together already. We could be back on the road in another day or two.”

Dorian blinked and found himself, unexpectedly, moved. “They’re working fast. I wouldn’t have expected them to be… invested. Especially since we’re so far away.”

“Cole’s doing,” Lavellan said. “If Corypheus overruns Thedas, it’s only a matter of time before he turns his attentions further afield. I think Zewu-jun agreed that it’s better to attack now, while Corypheus’s footholds are still not well established, rather than waiting and letting him grow stronger.”

Dorian let out a breath. “That’s a relief,” he said. “How fast do they think they can get to us?” 

“About a week and a half,” Lavellan chirped. Dorian nearly dropped his tray.

“A _week and a half?_ ” he demanded.

“And that’s if they’re carrying us on their swords.” Lavellan paused and grimaced. “They’re going to have to send the mounts after us on foot, unfortunately, so I expect that’ll be… the better part of a year before they catch up. I hope Bull doesn’t mind, he loves that elk we got him--”

“Ha, yes, well, I’m sure it will be fine,” Dorian said quickly, so he wouldn’t have to think about Bull and love in the same thought, and fled into his room.

Dinnertime came and went, and Dorian was fully planning on scrounging from the kitchens again, since that had worked decently well last time, when a soft tap came at his door. Too light to be Bull, but nevertheless, Dorian cracked the door just a hair to see who it was before he slid it the rest of the way open. One of the servants, making concerned eyebrows at him, very worried that he wasn’t feeling well and--bless her heart--bearing a tray of dinner for him. He assured her that he was only a little under the weather and thanked her profusely for the consideration.

He couldn’t nap any more, so he waited, tense with nerves, and at length heard Bull and Lavellan talking quietly as they came up the steps and went into their own chambers, on either side of his own. He was almost--strangely--disappointed when nobody came knocking, but he supposed he hadn’t given them any reason to think that he’d be in his room instead of off gallivanting with Wei Wuxian.

It was several hours later, when his eyes were getting heavy enough that he thought he could sleep again that an idle musing drifted through his mind: Hm. Funny. Wei Wuxian hadn’t come to knock on his door either. Dorian wondered what he was up to.

*

“Ah! Er-gege, are you--oh, _oh_ , right there, yeah--are you going to keep me here all night?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Aren’t you ready for a break? Don’t you want to--hnnnn!--eat something, clean up a bit?”

Lan Zhan hitched Wei Wuxian’s legs higher around his waist and, somehow, managed to fuck in even harder, faster. “Not enough.” They’d been going long enough that even he, jadelike and cool, was flushed and dripping with sweat.

Wei Wuxian laughed deliriously and pulled him into another wet kiss, scratching his nails down Lan Zhan’s shoulders. “Not enough,” he agreed, breathless. “What’s going to be enough, huh?”

“Everything,” Lan Zhan gritted out.

Another laugh, even brighter. “Good--” His voice, already very hoarse, cracked, and he licked a drop of sweat up Lan Zhan’s neck to his ear. “Is that all you’ve got? Is that it? Put your back into it--oh! Just like that, _yeah_ \--If it’s not enough to fuck me through the mattress all day long, what’s enough? Hah? You’ll have to marry me or something--”

“Yes--”

“--right in front of Lan Qiren and everybody, so they know I’m yours--”

“ _Yes._ ”

“--good, yeah, and then fuck me like this again on our wedding night, we won’t even take off our red robes, you can just bend me over and have me--” 

A wordless snarl, panted against Wei Wuxian’s neck. 

“Yeah, yes, is that enough? To marry me and break the wedding bed? Will that be enough?” Lan Zhan was getting close again, his rhythm stuttering. “Is it? Tell me, tell me--”

*

Dorian woke up the next morning with the feeling that he’d overreacted. Foolish thing, that was him. Foolish and cowardly and undignified, hiding in his rooms like that. 

To prove himself wrong--or spite himself, he wasn’t quite sure which--he went to breakfast, sat next to Lavellan, was his usual charming and delightful self. 

Lavellan didn’t suspect a thing, just chattered enthusiastically about what he’d been up to for the past few days--the assurance of the alliance and the support it would provide had already gone a long, long way to bolstering his morale, and Dorian’s lighthearted commentary cinched it.

The thing Dorian wasn’t thinking about was… well, the same thing he was usually trying hard not to think about: Bull, and his sharp eyes (eye, technically), and his sharper mind. 

Dorian had to assume that Bull knew what had happened yesterday morning, in that odd and _painfully_ obvious moment when he’d said _that word_ and Dorian and Wei Wuxian had both frozen in surprise. In fact, Dorian had to assume that Bull had done it on purpose, had said it deliberately at precisely that moment, in front of precisely those people. That was Bull’s way, wasn’t it--be clever and conniving and roundabout, spy-sneaky. It was just that sometimes the clever, conniving path was straight through the middle, straight as an arrowshot right to the heart of Dorian’s defenses, or lack thereof. 

Cole had said that Bull meant it, of course, but what did it _mean_ that he meant it? 

“What’s the plan for today?” Dorian asked. 

“Packing up, I expect. Heading out tomorrow, very early. Bull’s grouchy about the transport situation--”

“What situation?”

“Oh, leaving the mounts behind and getting hauled back by flying sword. There will be a situation involving what is essentially, I am told, a large box that will be suspended by ropes--”

“Oh Maker,” said Dorian, feeling rather queasy. 

“Yes, that’s what Bull said,” said Lavellan, entirely sanguine. “And then a lot about it being unnatural magic shit, et cetera, et cetera, demons, et cetera, gruff harrumphing. Lan Sizhui had to take him off on a killing-things outing to cheer him up.”

Dorian made a noise of vague interest and hoped it sounded casual. “Fascinating. What sort of things are they imagining they’ll find?” 

“Don’t know. Apparently the Lan sect gets messages now and then about stuff like that--you know, like we do? _Dear Inquisition, we’ve got a demon problem and some weird Rifts, send help right away, love and kisses?_ Lan Sizhui said that they’d be back tonight, but probably late.”

“Ah,” Dorian said, and felt a huge weight off his shoulders. At least there was that. He could relax for the rest of the day and not have to worry about--things. Perhaps Wei Wuxian would be accommodating enough to spend the day in the library with him, reading books aloud so Dorian could transcribe through the translation spell. 

The first problem became apparent when Wei Wuxian proved extraordinarily difficult to find. He was not in the library or his favorite reading spot, and Dorian realized he had no idea where Wei Wuxian’s personal quarters were. In the end, he had to ask several of the Lan disciples if they’d seen him--all of the adults declined any knowledge of his location, and it wasn’t until one of the little teenagers overheard and scampered up to chirp that Senior Wei and the “Lightbearing Lord” (Dorian repressed the urge to roll his eyes) had gone up to the rabbit meadow that Dorian realized what he’d run into: The grown disciple he’d been speaking to shot a sharp glare at the teenager (who failed entirely to notice, bless him), by which Dorian understood that perhaps not everyone had the same glowing opinion of Wei Wuxian that Dorian himself and the teenagers did. 

He went up to the rabbit meadow.

He was oddly unsurprised to spot Lan Wangji first, standing out from the verdant greenery in his gleamingly white robes--he and Wei Wuxian were crouched together partway up the hill sloping up from the path, looking intently at something on the ground. “Elder brother?” Dorian said, stepping off the path toward them, and Wei Wuxian’s head shot up.

“Younger brother! Hi!” Wei Wuxian whispered loudly. “Come look! Quiet, though!” He beckoned energetically. “Lan Zhan, it’s okay, right?”

“Mn,” Lan Zhan said, nodding but not looking up.

Coming closer, Dorian noticed several things in quick succession, a cascade of information that he could meet with nothing but stunned incredulity: 

  1. They were holding hands--
  2. They were not, in fact, holding hands--
  3. Wait, yes they were, but their wrists were also tied together with a length of ribbon--
  4. \--Which explained why Lan Wangji in partial profile looked a little odd: it was the ribbon missing from his forehead.
  5. Wei Wuxian was glowingly pink in the cheeks, and his eyes were so bright they were almost sparkling, and both of them looked a little sweaty.
  6. Wei Wuxian looked like he’d been _mauled;_ his neck was more hickey than bare skin.



Dorian’s first instinct was to point his finger in Wei Wuxian’s stupid little face and screech, “ _Hah! Didn’t I tell you!_ ” and then laugh and laugh until he fell down the hill and had to prop himself up against a tree. He bit back the impulse, but he rather suspected that his expression would have given it away, if either of them had been looking at him.

“Look!” Wei Wuxian whispered, when Dorian stood directly behind them, and Dorian craned to peer over at whatever they were looking at--a little hollow in the ground, lined with a nest of dry grasses and soft white fur. Inside, snow-white and therefore nearly invisible against the nest, were four tiny baby rabbits, no longer than Dorian’s finger. An adult rabbit, also white, crouched contentedly next to the nest, nibbling a leaf from a basket next to Wei Wuxian’s feet. 

“Very cute,” Dorian said obligingly. And then, rather without meaning to, his mouth added: “You should show them to Bull, he’ll lose his mind. He’s a sap for cute things.”

Wei Wuxian barked a half-second of a bright laugh before he clapped his hand over his mouth, looking down at the rabbit. His wrist was both chafed as if he’d been tied, and bruised as if he’d been held tightly. _Good for him_ , Dorian thought approvingly.

“Sorry, Madam Little Feet,” Wei Wuxian whispered. He grinned over his shoulder at Dorian and nudged his elbow against Lan Zhan, who barely swayed. “A sap, huh? So’s this one. Bunnies, babies--right, Lan Zhan?”

“And Wei Ying,” Lan Wangji added, which made Wei Wuxian blush and squeak and hide his face against Lan Wangji’s sleeve--the movement pulled Lan Wangji’s collar just half an inch out of alignment and Dorian saw that he too had at least one hickey.

Dorian’s ability to refrain from commenting crumbled into dust. “Well, elder brother,” he said dryly, “you look like you’ve had a wonderful morning.”

“Oh!” Wei Wuxian bounced to his feet, dragging Lan Wangji’s wrist up a little when Wei Wuxian didn’t let go of his hand. He shoved his arm in Dorian’s face. “Look! Look at this! You were right! Look!”

Dorian shot a careful glance at Lan Wangji, who was apparently too well-laid to have any energy left for jealousy and who was still entirely occupied with gazing at the baby rabbits, and obligingly touched a fingertip to Wei Wuxian’s pulse point before the wrist could be shoved any closer to his nose.

The difference, even from a single little ping of magic, was stark--there was still that odd hollow place, but Wei Wuxian’s meridians were _singing_ with sparkling energy, glittering like the sunlight in the dancing water of a fountain. 

“Well?” Wei Wuxian said, grinning and impatient. “What do you think?” 

Frankly, Dorian thought that anyone who was this smug about getting laid deserved to be teased for it. He schooled his expression and smiled, dropping Wei Wuxian’s hand. “Congratulations, you’re pregnant.”

He managed to keep a straight face for two entire heartbeats while Wei Wuxian blinked at him and Lan Wangji, still crouched at their feet, froze. 

Then Wei Wuxian laughed so hard he had to bend over and lean on his knees, wiping tears out of his eyes. “Ah, heavens, younger brother, that was good! Wasn’t that good, Lan Zhan?”

“You startled Little Feet,” Lan Zhan said reprovingly. His ears were scarlet.

Wei Wuxian got himself under control with some difficulty. With a few last stray giggles, he said, “It, uh. It _was_ a joke, right, younger brother?” 

Dorian rolled his eyes. “Yes, obviously.”

“Does your side have magic for that, though?”

“Wei _Ying_ ,” Lan Wangji said, looking up at him with shock all over his face. Wei Wuxian glanced down at him briefly, did a double-take, and grinned, tugging Lan Wangji to his feet with their joined hands.

“No,” Dorian said flatly. “We don’t. Unless you want to try something ill-advised and horrible with blood magic--”

“Ah, well, I use blood for magic every day, that shouldn’t be a problem.” Wei Wuxian was shooting sly little looks at Lan Wangji from the corner of his eyes. Lan Wangji’s blush was spreading from his ears to his cheeks. 

“Really not advisable,” Dorian said. “Outright dangerous. Cannot recommend--”

“Uh-huh, sure, whatever--Lan Zhaaan, what’s that look for? Doesn’t A-Yuan deserve siblings? Wouldn’t he be such a good big brother?”

“--Better to stick to completely normal and safe things like time magic--” Dorian continued.

Wei Wuxian’s grin turned wicked. “Doesn’t second elder brother Lan want a few more little Lans running around, tiny little things with tiny robes and tiny ribbons and tiny, tiny boots? Maybe he wants some baby bunnies of his own, just like Little Feet? How many would be enough, Lan Zhan? Three? Five? Is that all? Just five? That’s so few! Are you sure?”

Lan Wangji’s face was flaming red now, and he was gripping Wei Wuxian’s hand. “ _Wei Ying_ ,” he said through his teeth.

Dorian paused. “Oh. Oh, I see, you weren’t actually serious about the magic. That’s fine, then, have fun.”

Wei Wuxian turned his fox-grin away from Lan Wangji and onto Dorian. “Who says I wasn’t serious about it? I’m always serious, younger brother, you should know that.”

“In that case, as I said: I can’t recommend it,” Dorian said again, firmly. “Keep it as a fun kink, that is my advice.”

Wei Wuxian’s grin dropped, replaced with a pout. “You’re supposed to splutter and say, ‘Wei Wuxian, don’t be so shameless!’ and stomp off.”

“Wei Wuxian, don’t be so shameless,” Dorian said obligingly. “Great, now that’s out of the way, I was hoping you could come dictate some books to me today while I copy them. The Inquisitor told me that we’re all leaving tomorrow, and I want to have something to read on the way home.” With his luck, he’d be trapped in that little flying box with Bull, and if he didn’t have something to occupy himself with… Oh, Maker’s breath, he’d have to make _conversation_ with Bull. That could not be allowed to happen.

“Oh, I, uh…” Wei Wuxian looked shifty as hell, and Dorian could _see_ the moment he decided to dissemble and claim that he was far too busy. 

“If you help me,” Dorian said, his voice dripping with sweetness, “I’ll tell you how babies are made.”

Even Wei Wuxian’s cheeks went a bit pink at that. Lan Wangji was looking resolutely off into the middle distance, which did not change the fiery blush clinging doggedly to his ears.

Amateurs.

*

The moment that Lan Wangji finally deigned to untie his wrist from Wei Wuxian’s long enough to step out to fetch tea for Wei Wuxian after hours of dictation, Wei Wuxian said, “Okay, quick, tell me now before second elder brother gets back. It’s better to tell just me, he’ll be too embarrassed.”

Dorian looked up from the book he was feverishly copying. “Oh. _Oh_ , I see now. That’s why he was glaring at me.”

“Eh?”

“You call him elder brother when you’re flirting with him, and you told me to call you--”

Wei Wuxian tsked and waved this off impatiently. “It’s different.”

“He thought I was flirting with you.” Dorian nodded sagely. “That explains it.”

“It’s a term of endearment. Even little babies say it! It’s cute! Now, can you focus--”

“I’d just rather not have Lan Wangji glaring at me, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Ugh! Fine! If you don’t want to call me elder brother, then just call me elder brother instead. Or elder brother, if you want to be all fancy like Lan Zhan.”

Dorian peered at him. “According to the translation spell, that was the same word three times. You have three different ways to say--” He paused and chose his words carefully, “--to refer to a male sibling who is older than you or, and I’m taking this on faith here, a man you want to ingratiate yourself to in a way that may or may not be flirtatious and/or affectionate depending on the context of the speaker and, likely, the interlocutor?”

Wei Wuxian made a bewildered face. “Oh, you definitely wouldn’t say elder brother or elder brother if you were trying to play coquette.”

Entirely _entirely_ lost, Dorian said mildly, “Oh, I see.” He did not see. Wei Wuxian had been speaking too fast for Dorian to pick out the actual sounds of the words he was using, and besides that, it was quite distracting to have the translation spell shoving meaning directly into his brain. “Shall we return to dictation?”

“No!” Wei Wuxian slapped his palm on the table. “You’re going to tell me the thing!”

“Tell you--oh, yes.” Dorian sat up, laced his hands together on top of the desk and smiled. “Well, elder brother--and Maker only knows which one you heard me say, because I did _not_ intend it to be the cute one--when a mother and a father love each other very much, sometimes they--”

Wei Wuxian threw the book at him. “You told me that the other night when we were talking about my golden core! Now tell me the _spell_ , younger brother! The magic! You said there was blood magic!”

“I never said anything about telling you about the _magic_ , though, now did I,” Dorian said smugly. “As you so kindly told me, it’s forbidden to lie in the Cloud Recesses, isn’t it? Now please, continue reading.”

Wei Wuxian grumbled and shot him several dirty looks as he found his place in the book again, but then paused. 

“Dorian Pavus,” he said. His voice was rather different than it had been.

“Wei Wuxian,” Dorian replied. “What.”

“Why weren’t you embarrassed, earlier?”

“When?”

“When I told you that you were supposed to call me shameless and storm off.”

Dorian blinked at him. “What, because of you and Lan Wangji discovering a new weird kink right in front of me?” He snorted. “Please. I’ve heard worse. I’ve done worse. I’ve _invented_ worse. One time, I had five men at once and they strung me up on a swing made of silk and they all came on my face, and--” He stopped when Wei Wuxian’s jaw dropped, and he shrugged. “Oh, also, an expert tip--if you’re going to be playing with restraints,” he looked pointedly at Wei Wuxian’s chafed wrists, “be sure to keep a pair of scissors or a sharp knife nearby, just in case the knots get too tight to undo. If your hands go numb, take the restraints off immediately.”

Wei Wuxian spluttered. “Now who’s the shameless one!” 

Dorian set his writing brush down and laced his fingers together again. “Wei Wuxian, I fought tooth and nail for the lesson I am about to share with you. I quite literally shed blood for it, so listen closely: Is good sex with a consenting partner who cares for you something to be ashamed of?” He met Wei Wuxian’s eyes steadily for several heartbeats. “That’s the whole lesson,” he added. “Merely asking the question is the lesson.”

*

There was nothing for it. Dorian would have to be in Bull’s vicinity today, Maker preserve him. He packed his bags--he’d barely had time to get unpacked--and when the Inquisitor tapped on his door at dawn, Dorian was wide awake and ready to go. A strange calm had settled over him sometime in the night, as if his body and his sleeping mind had agreed that they had done all the fretting that they were capable of, that everything that could be done had been done and everything that could be thought of had been analyzed into the ground, and now things would simply happen as they would. 

Lavellan was bleary. “Can you take first shift?” he mumbled as they walked through the cool early-morning air toward the front gates of the Cloud Recesses, where the assembly was happening. “Do you mind? I need an extra two hours at least.”

“What first shift?” 

Lavellan blinked owlishly at him. “With the box? For traveling?”

“I know of the box, yes,” Dorian said cautiously. “I heard nothing about the box beyond its existence and that we would be inside it, hauled home by flight.”

“Oh. Oh, right. Yeah, you weren’t in any of the meetings.” Lavellan scrubbed his face with his palms until his cheeks were pink and his eyes a little more alert. “So they can fly, but carrying anything beyond their own body weight apparently tires them out faster, other than the super-strong ones like--like Sect Leader Lan and Hanguang-jun.”

“Who?”

“Uh. Lan Wangji?”

“Ah. I’ve had my translation spell up the whole time. I’ve only heard it as ‘Lightbearing Lord’.”

Lavellan hummed sleepily. “Bit pretentious.”

“That’s what I thought too. But the box?”

“Oh yeah. Box.” Lavellan raised his hands and sketched a nebulous shape in the air. “We’re riding home in a box. They carry us. But they will get tired.”

“Right,” Dorian said slowly. “It _is_ probably quite a heavy box, if it’s large enough to contain the two of us and Bull.”

Lavellan snapped his fingers. “Nailed it. So we’re supposed to help. With magic.” He nodded sagely, still clearly half asleep.

“By… making the box less heavy.”

“Right.”

“And by shifts, you mean that you and I will be alternating between keeping the spell going.”

“Exactly.”

Dorian already had a headache. Nothing to be done about it. He heaved a sigh. “If we absolutely must. I suppose it’s too late to come up with anything else.” 

“Wei Wuxian has prepared some extra spells to help in case of emergency, apparently.”

“Does _he_ know that he’s supposed to have prepared those?” Dorian added, peevish, “Because I didn’t hear anything about this until just now.”

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Lavellan said, yawning. “He’s supposed to be a genius.”

“He _is_ a genius.”

Lavellan patted him on the shoulder. “So are you,” he crooned. “Two geniuses. It’ll be _fine._ ”

The staging area--a wide courtyard right at the front of the Cloud Recesses, at one end of the wall of rules--was already busy when they arrived. Dorian looked around for the box and, as his expectations were supremely low, was pleasantly surprised to see that what Lavellan had described as “a box” was, at first glance, a pretty little carriage just like ones Dorian had seen down in Caiyi town and a few times on the road while they had been traveling. At second glance, he saw it had in fact been partially disassembled--the wheels, axles, driver’s bench, and draught-poles had been removed, leaving nothing but the passenger cabin.

“Maker,” Dorian said, choked with emotion despite himself. “I _will_ miss this place. They don’t do anything except in high style.” There were _tassels_ on the overhanging corners of the roof, which at its peak bore an elegant carved finial, bright with gold leaf. There were windows covered wooden lattice, and he could see the flutter of curtains inside. “Look at that thing. Lovely.”

“Why do you sound surprised?” Lavellan said, crossing the courtyard towards the carriage.

“You said _a box_. I thought you meant _a box_ . Like a very large crate. I thought we’d be shut in the dark all the way home except when they let us out to stretch our legs. This is not a _box_ , Inquisitor.”

“Mm, yeah, it’s nice,” Lavellan said absently as they reached the carriage. Without another word, he flung open the door and went inside. Dorian, following a few steps behind, peeked in after him--the Inquisitor had already fallen asleep on a pile of cushions. Cushions! May wonders never cease.

“Yes, alright, I should have had more faith. That’s egg on my face, I will admit.” Dorian mused aloud to no one in particular. He tossed his bag inside and, hands on his hips, turned to survey the rest of the courtyard.

He spotted Bull almost immediately, standing a little ways away from a group of the adorable teenagers--Dorian recognized Lan Sizhui in their midst. Bull was gazing up at the wall of rules again. 

A little of the last few days’ terror tried to rear its head again, but it was swamped by that persistent serenity. Without entirely intending to, he found himself clasping his hands behind his back and ambling towards him, between the rushing crowd of Lan disciples and servants assembling piles of what Dorian assumed were all the things one of their battalions might require. 

He stopped next to Bull, who glanced down at him and half-smiled. “Morning, big guy.”

“Good morning, The Iron Bull,” Dorian said. “I heard you had the opportunity to go on an excursion yesterday.”

“Sure did. Nice to stretch the legs before getting crammed inside _that_ thing,” he said, with a pointed look toward the carriage.

“Better than a crate, isn’t it?” 

“Wouldn’t have to worry about my horns in a crate. Wouldn’t matter if a crate got scuffed up a bit.” Bull muttered. “It’s not going to be my fault when I knock a hole in the window lattice of that thing. Or the roof. Or the wall.”

“Of course not,” Dorian said, all magnanimity. “If you promise to be good, I shall even agree to defend you, should such accidents occur.”

“Define good.”

“No puns, to start with. None of your jokes, either.”

“Aw, you’re no fun.”

“I’m plenty fun, as you are abundantly aware,” said Dorian’s mouth before he could stop it. He swallowed hard so he wouldn’t have to do something as obvious as clear his throat. “Anyway, how was your outing?”

“Not bad. Not as much to kill as I was hoping.” Bull grunted in displeasure. “The demons around here don’t even go _splat_.”

“Oh, how terrible, the splatting is simply the best part. My condolences.” 

“Thanks.” 

Silence fell between them. Bull continued staring at the wall of rules. Dorian continued glancing at him out of the corner of his eye. After a moment, Dorian shook himself and said, “Cole?” 

“Dorian?” said Cole, right at his shoulder.

“There you are. Good morning,” Dorian said, forcing some heartiness into his voice. “Are you ready to go home today?” 

Cole blinked from under the brim of his hat. “I’ve gone home every day, Dorian.”

“What, all the way back to Skyhold?”

“I was worried about them.”

“Of course you were. Are they well?”

“The girl in the kitchen is crying. She likes the boy from the stables and he doesn’t like her back.”

Bull chuckled under his breath. “If that’s the worst of it, I’m not complaining.”

“Krem is... frustrated. Scared. He wants to keep sparring-- _can’t get soft, can’t lose my edge, the fight could happen any day now, gotta be ready_ \--but his body won’t cooperate.”

Bull finally turned away from the wall, frowning. “What do you mean, kid?”

“It keeps wanting him to lie down and rest, but he won’t listen. And he’s all out of clean handkerchiefs to blow his nose.” 

Bull laughed suddenly. “Oh, he’s got a _cold_. Yeah, that’s about right, classic Krem.”

As much as Dorian liked it here, he suddenly felt a sharp ache of homesickness--for _Skyhold_ , of all places. He was accustomed to feeling homesick for Tevinter; that was always present, a low burn in the back of his mind like a pot set to the side of the hearth to simmer. But suddenly… He laughed under his breath. Skyhold. Really. Of all places.

“What else are we waiting for?” Dorian said, glancing across the courtyard again.

“Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian went to say goodbye to the rabbit,” Cole said.

“Oh, Little Feet?” Bull said with interest. “Sizhui introduced me. Cutest little thing I’ve ever seen.”

“She’s glad Lan Wangji is happy now,” Cole said dreamily. “I was with them before I was here. She wanted to say thank you to him.”

“The rabbit did?” Dorian said, puzzled.

“ _This Little Feet is most humbly grateful for Hanguang-jun’s care all these years, and most joyous to congratulate you on your marriage,_ ” Cole said, as if that explained anything. He looked off towards the back hill. “They’re on their way now.”

Indeed, within less than a minute, they saw a shape in the sky that quickly resolved into Lan Wangji, standing on the blade of his sword as it flew ( _How???_ Dorian wondered), with Wei Wuxian standing before him, arms looped around Lan Wangji’s neck and apparently deep in the middle of an argument with him. Dorian wove his translation spell in preparation.

“Just give me a straight answer!” Wei Wuxian was shouting as they came within earshot. “When the fuck did you tell your bunny that we were married!”

“Do not shout,” Lan Wangji said, as the sword came down in the middle of the courtyard.

“Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan!! How does a bunny know what marriage is!”

“She is a spiritual bunny.” Lan Wangji lifted Wei Wuxian, stepped off the sword, and set him on his feet. Wei Wuxian was apparently too incoherent with outrage to notice. They were still tied together at the wrist, Dorian saw.

“Yeah, a spiritual bunny, emphasis on _bunny._ How does a _bunny_ know I’m married!”

“Well, by rabbit standards, you probably are,” Dorian called, dry. “If rabbits have marriages--which I agree is a ridiculous concept--then surely you’ve filled all the requirements.”

Wei Wuxian shoved an accusatory finger in Lan Wangji’s face. “See? Ridiculous! We’re not bunnies, Lan Zhan! We don’t use bunny standards!”

Lan Wangji gazed at the pointing finger steadily, then at its owner. “Wei Ying does not want to be married to me?”

“I didn’t say that! I did _not_ say that, second elder brother!” Wei Wuxian shook the finger, scolding. “What happened to the virtuous and upright Lightbearing Lord, huh? Once he was so righteous and honorable, but now he has no concern whatsoever for such things! Now he will simply grab someone around the waist and say _Hm, this is my husband now_ , is that it? No three bows! No ceremony! No propriety at all! Aren’t you ashamed?”

Lan Wangji stepped forward and calmly slid one arm around Wei Wuxian’s waist. “Hm,” he said. “This is my husband now.”

Wei Wuxian went bright red and shrieked in protest, drumming his fists against Lan Wangji’s chest. “Forbidden! Lan Zhan! Lan Wangji! Have you no mercy for my fragile heart!” 

“Uh,” said Lan Sizhui, from several feet away. “Good morning, Senior Wei, Lightbearing Lord.” He seemed to be attempting to crush down laughter through sheer strength of will and composure; his companions, around him, were having less success, turning away to muffle their giggles into their hands and sleeves.

“Sizhui!” Wei Wuxian said, charging towards him, dragging Lan Wangji along by the ribbon tying them together. “I am sorry that I had to leave you in the care of such a terrible, unrighteous man! Your father is truly the worst!”

“Oh, which one?” Sizhui said cheerfully, not missing a beat.

Wei Wuxian shook his scolding-finger in the boy’s face. “I will bury you like a turnip, young master, see if I don’t!” He turned towards Dorian, eyes flashing. “Did _you_ know I was supposed to be working on weight-lessening talismans?” he demanded.

“I certainly did not. Did you know that I was going to be expected to maintain a spell like that for hours at a time?” 

“Of course I didn’t!” Wei Wuxian drew himself up straight and huffed. “This is the problem with being a genius, younger brother! They start expecting that you can do whatever with just five minutes’ warning, no problem! I am sure you can relate to this!”

“Oh, certainly. It’s a terrible trial. We are beset by criminals on every side.”

“Exactly!”

Dorian studied his nails. “So did you come up with anything, with your five minutes’ warning?”

Wei Wuxian froze. “Maybe,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Did you?” 

“I may have a few idle thoughts I’ve been toying with.” Dorian shrugged, looked Wei Wuxian up and down, gave him the most unctuous smile in his arsenal. “I hope you got lots of rest last night? I did.”

Wei Wuxian’s eye twitched. “I suppose we’ll just have to see whose solution is better.” 

“I suppose we shall.”

“Hm,” Bull said beside Dorian. “If we are leaving soon, I have a question.” It took a moment for Dorian to realize he’d heard it through the _translation_ spell, that Bull had spoken in the Gusu dialect. He looked up at Bull with surprise, shocked out of his friendly little squabble with Wei Wuxian. 

Bull was looking at Lan Wangji.

“May I ask you,” Bull said, and gestured to the wall of rules. “What do you think of this?”

Lan Wangji looked at him for a long moment, looked at the wall. He stepped forward, Wei Wuxian following after him, and stopped beside Bull. He and Bull gazed at the wall without speaking, utterly still, for enough time that Dorian and Wei Wuxian both exchanged panicked, bewildered looks behind their backs and attempted to communicate in several frantic, silent gestures which amounted to _What the fuck? I don’t know! You tell me!_

At length, Lan Wangji said, “What is right, and what is wrong? What is white, and what is black?”

“Hm,” Bull said. He turned to Lan Wangji and bowed neatly in the Gusu style. “Thank you.”

Lan Wangji nodded once and turned away, leading Wei Wuxian back to the middle of the courtyard--Dorian tried to catch Wei Wuxian’s eye for another _what the fuck, though?_ but for some reason, Wei Wuxian’s previous indignation had all melted away, and he was looking quietly at Lan Wangji with an expression of such tenderness and regret and love that Dorian had to turn away, his eyes burning like he’d glanced into the sun.

Dorian wanted desperately to ask Bull what it meant, but--there were too many people, and in another few moments Wei Wuxian was calling after him to come and attend to the inconsequential little matter of bending reality itself to make the carriage weightless, and then there was the great expenditure of energy to work the spell, and then the chaos of actually getting everyone in the air, and then--

It was so quiet, flying. Lavellan was sleeping soundly in the corner, nestled in the cushions. Bull, clearly deep in thought, hadn’t said a word since the conversation with Lan Wangji at the wall. All Dorian could hear was the gentle whisper of the wind around them, the soft sound of the curtains’ fabric, the flapping robes and soft conversation of the people ten or so feet above them who were bearing the carriage’s weight by ropes tied to their swords (and the slightly louder, brighter voice of Wei Wuxian, flirting relentlessly with Lan Wangji). 

Dorian stroked his power across the spell like he was stroking a cat, and when all seemed to be well, he divided his concentration. “Bull,” he said. “What the hell was that about?” 

“Hm? Oh. Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian got their shit together and now they’re fucking. Good for them, knew they could pull through.”

“I _know that_ ,” Dorian said. “I knew that _yesterday_. Also I have eyes, Bull, you’re not the only person who can make deductions when a person is standing in front of you with seven visible love-bites on his neck.”

“Help me pick out a wedding present for them, yeah?” Bull said absently. “You’re better at fancy gift shit than I am.”

“Sure, yes, whatever-- _what was it about?_ At the wall, with Lan Wangji.”

“You heard him. You had your little spell up.”

“The Iron Bull, are you being obstinate and unforthcoming on purpose?”

Bull looked at him properly then and grinned softly. “No. Sorry, Dorian. Just in my own head.” His gaze went distant again. After a moment, he said, “You send Tal-Vashoth up a mountain, you say _Here’s a wall of three thousand rules, look, we’ve figured it all out. We’re certain. This is the key to it all. This is the right way to live._ ”

“Yes,” said Dorian, barely louder than the wind. “I remember this conversation.”

“Yeah. But Tal-Vashoth wouldn’t be Tal-Vashoth if he hadn’t learned how to ask questions, even in the face of someone’s absolute certainty. So he looks at these rules, at all this certainty, and he says--”

“Only three thousand?” 

“No, _Qunari_ says, _Only three thousand?_ But Qunari isn’t there anymore, so Tal-Vashoth says, I _s that really it? That can’t be it_. So he looks at them. He looks hard at them. And he asks questions, because that’s why he’s Tal-Vashoth, and that’s why he was a real good Hissrad, and that’s why he was Ashkaari as a child-- _the one who seeks_ . And in asking questions, he sees all the little gaps, and how they add up into bigger gaps. Chasms. So he can only conclude… These rules aren’t the answer, because there is no one answer. As some smart guy recently said to me, _All the rules in the world can’t delineate what the right thing is always going to be._ ”

Dorian reached for words, for something to say, and couldn’t find anything. 

Bull didn’t seem to notice. “ _What is right, and what is wrong? What is white, and what is black?_ ” He was very still, as he so often was when he was in deepest thought, and it occurred to Dorian that this Bull, more than any other of the acts and personas and masks that Bull wore, was the real one--deep and still and solid and quiet. “Lan Wangji meant the same thing you did--the rules are flawed. They have gaps. If they have gaps, it means there’s stuff in the world that can’t be sorted into right and wrong. If you can’t sort everything, then why bother trying to sort anything at all? The world is too complicated for that-- _people_ are too complicated for that.”

Dorian shifted so that he was leaning against same wall as Bull, quite near him, and stretched his legs out. Crossing his arms, he said, “So the rules try to answer the question, _What is the right way to be?_ And you--or Tal-Vashoth--have discovered that because rules cannot ever fully answer it, there is no answer.”

“There doesn’t need to be an answer as long as you’re thinking about the question.” Bull tipped his head a little from side to side. “You could say that just asking the question is the answer.”

Dorian had to smile. “Funny, I recently said quite a similar thing to someone.” He studied Bull’s profile. “You didn’t spend any time at all talking to Lan Wangji, and you got all that from one sentence?” 

“It was a good sentence,” Bull said, distant again, lost in thought. “There was a lot packed into it.” Another intensely thoughtful silence, and then Bull said, “Did you find out much about Wei Wuxian’s past?”

“He was dead for thirteen years. Lan Wangji didn’t take it well, obviously; Wei Wuxian says he was in mourning the whole time. There are Lan disciples who to this day actively dislike Wei Wuxian. He’s got a knack for types of magic that strike me as… not quite aligned with the rest of the orthodoxy I’ve seen around here. He believes his necromancy to be, quote ‘a little bit evil, but in a sexy way’, unquote, and he does it because he currently lacks the ability to connect to the same kind of magic that Lan Wangji does. He also once fell into somewhere powerfully Fade-adjacent and apparently deeply unpleasant. That’s all I know. Why?”

Bull nodded slowly. “I’ve got a hunch, that’s all.”

“Oh, more spy things,” Dorian said with great relish. “That old chestnut! Well, by all means, we haven’t got anything else to entertain ourselves with. Praytell, what’s your hunch?”

But his teasing had landed flat. Bull’s voice was steady, his hands loose in his lap. “I’ve just got this hunch that there must have been a moment where Lan Wangji stood on his own version of the cliff at the Storm Coast.”

Dorian closed his eyes, feeling an instantaneous sense-memory of the driving, stinging rain cold against his face, the salt-spray of the sea that he could taste on the wind even high up on the cliff, dozens of feet above the beach. The moment of horror and fear as he’d frozen--as they’d _all_ frozen--unable to do anything but watch Bull face a terrible choice. The uncertainty in the moment that seemed to last a thousand years. The urgent thought in his head that no matter what choice Bull made, Dorian would understand why he’d done it, they’d all understand why… 

And then the crashing relief when Bull had sounded the horn-- _that was right, that was the right choice, thank the Maker he’d made that choice_ \--

“You think he once had to ask questions too,” Dorian said quietly. “Tal-Vashoth questions.”

“Tal-Vashoth questions,” Bull said, his voice flat. “When somebody’s yours, you protect them, even if it means breaking all the rules, right? Try to tell me Lan Wangji doesn’t know that down to his bones.”

“I can’t tell you that.” Dorian reached out and took Bull’s hand. He pushed more power into the weightlessness spell and turned his attention from it for just long enough to cast the translation spell between them, and before he could think better of it, he said, “I won’t even try to tell you that, amatus.” 

He dropped the spell again and mentally took the threads of the weightlessness spell up again, his heart in his throat, the word _amatus_ ringing through him (was that what Wei Wuxian had meant by meridians, those singing pathways of light that that word ran along?)--

Bull’s hand squeezed his, and Bull released a breath, some of that intense, deep stillness lifting off of him. “Big sap,” he murmured.

There was a quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth, scarred but yet so handsome, and Dorian couldn’t help but ask, “What did you hear?”

“Kadan,” Bull replied. “Some other things. Mostly kadan.”

Dorian nodded and dropped his forehead to Bull’s warm shoulder, curling a little against Bull’s side so his drawn-up knees rested against Bull’s broad thigh. He squeezed Bull’s hand again. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this fic, I'm on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/_alexrowland) in my disguise as a professional fantasy author, and I am on [tumblr](http://ariaste.tumblr.com) for cool nerd shit. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!!


End file.
